2026-09-23T08:32:06Z https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/132684 2026-03-24 col_2142_5131 col_2142_11614 com_2142_5130 com_2142_11613 com_2142_8903

application/pdf en text Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I Access', the embargo will last until 2027-12-01 The student, Junyi Mei, accepted the attached license on 2025-12-03 at 10:41. The student, Junyi Mei, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2025-12-03 at 10:49. This Thesis was approved for publication on 2025-12-03 at 14:38. DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #23042 on 2026-02-19 at 18:46:40 How social status shapes U.S. children’s beliefs about social mobility Mei, Junyi 2025-12-03 Rizzo, Michael T. Stern, Chadly D. social mobility beliefs, social status, social development, childhood eng Children grow up within social hierarchies that shape their everyday lives. Social mobility is a core mechanism through which societies either challenge or maintain existing inequalities. The present study examined how U.S. children’s social status—both experimentally manipulated and measured at the national level—shapes their beliefs about social mobility for themselves and their high- and low-status peers. Children (N=130; 3-8 years; 70 girls, 59 boys, 1 non-binary; 12.3% Asian, 6.9% Black, 11.6% Latine, 20.7% Multiracial, and 48.5% White) were randomly assigned to either experimentally advantaged or disadvantaged groups. They were then assessed on their 1) general expectations about social mobility, 2) effort-contingent expectations for mobility, and 3) post-hoc explanations upward and downward mobility. We found that compared to experimentally-disadvantaged children, experimentally-advantaged children were more likely to have higher expectations for themselves and high-status peers, but lower expectations for low-status peers. With age, both experimentally- and nationally-disadvantaged children exhibited higher expectations for themselves and lower expectations for high-status peers, whereas experimentally- and nationally-advantaged children’s expectations remained stable. Older children were also more likely to believe working hard leads to upward mobility and attribute upward/downward mobility to individual effort. This tendency was especially pronounced for their own upward (vs. downward) mobility, but less so when evaluating the upward mobility of high-status peers (vs. themselves). These results suggest that children’s beliefs about social mobility develop throughout childhood, differ by target, and are shaped by their own social status. 2025-12 Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132684 Copyright 2025 Junyi Mei Psychology Psychology University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign M.S. Thesis