Alumna Laura Elenbaas (Ph.D. ’17) Receives 2019 American Psychological Association Dissertation Award

Dr. Laura Elenbaas (Ph.D. ’17), an alumna of the University of Maryland College of Education, has been awarded the 2019 American Psychological Association Dissertation Award in the association’s Division 7 for Developmental Psychology.

The APA gives the award to an individual whose dissertation is deemed to be an outstanding contribution to developmental psychology. Dr. Elenbaas is slated to give a presentation on her project at the APA’s annual convention next year in Chicago.

Dr. Elenbaas’ dissertation investigated children's perceptions of social and economic inequalities.  Specifically, she assessed children ages eight to fourteen about whether they would have biases about  the willingness of individuals from high income and low income backgrounds to rectify inequalities of opportunities when making decisions about resource allocation. 

The findings revealed that children expected both high- and low-wealth groups to divide resources equally among children from different backgrounds.  With age, however, children expected high income individuals to be motivated by selfishness and low-wealth groups to be motivated by addressing broader access for opportunities. This was the case whether the participants themselves were from high or low income families. Distributing resources, especially educational opportunities, is a fundamental fairness issue and demonstrating that children have biases about the motives of others based on income points to an area for educational intervention.

“Laura's dissertation charts new territory in developmental science in the area of children's perceptions of social inequalities,” Dr. Killen said. “With a very clever methodology she probed children's and adolescents' ideas about wealth inequalities by measuring their own expectation for whether high-income or low-income groups would rectify inequalities regarding access to educational opportunities.  Biases in childhood are easier to change than by adulthood when stereotypes are deeply entrenched.”

Dr. Melanie Killen, a professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, served as Dr. Elenbaas’ doctoral advisor.

“The results provide an eye-opener to children's perceptions about what it means to have wealth and when individuals are motivated to help others. The findings constitute a novel contribution to child development research and developmental science.”

Dr. Elenbaas is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Rochester.