Hungarian
students’ views about poverty and wealth
Eötvös
Loránd University, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Hungary
Abstract:
Several researches have presented, that the socioeconomic
status of the family has a great significance resulting in provable differences
in children’s ideas about social inequality. Our study examines how students
with different social status perceive wealth and poverty in the Hungarian
society. Based upon the children’s drawings and interviews, we studied nearly a
hundred primary school students’ ideas about the physical, psychological as
well as social characteristics of poor and wealthy people, moreover, about the
causes of their social position. We suppose that the effect of the different
socioeconomic status can be detected in Hungarian children’s social
representations as well. According to our further hypothesis students interpret
the position of figures with similar social status more realistic than that of
other figures with different social status; rather, the latter is interpreted
more legendarily. Thus, the attribution of these social positions reveals a
difference between groups. Results indicate that based upon the complexity and
the contexts of the drawings the two groups of students are similar in many
respects in the opinions about the external and essential components of poverty
and wealth. Nevertheless, the analysis of interviews explores the groups’
different ideas about the attribution of wealth and poverty.
Key words: social cognition,
socioeconomic status, attribution of wealth, attribution of poverty