Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Group disparities, such as the gender wage or racial achievement gap in the US, pervade societies. Unfortunately, children and adults often attribute these disparities to inherent (e.g. biological) features of groups, which leads to problematic outcomes (e.g., overgeneralizing, endorsing disparities). In contrast to inherent thinking, structural thinking about social disparities, which attributes disparities to a stable external structure, could lead to more positive social outcomes. Here, we induced biological, cultural, or structural thinking about an occupational disparity, and found that the latter caused adults (n = 90) to show more context-sensitive generalizations, judge the disparity as less acceptable, and provide more structural interventions. 7- to 9-year-olds (n = 70) showed similar but weaker results for more context-sensitive generalizations and judging the disparity as less acceptable. Cultural thinking showed an intermediate pattern between biological and structural thinking. Overall, structural thinking could be a fruitful way of mobilizing progress on social disparities.