A children's case for reparations: U.S. Children's and adults' ideas about collective responsibility

Are current members of a social group responsible for making amends for the harm caused by their predecessors? We explored U.S. children's and adults' views on whether responsibility is limited to the original perpetrators or extends to the group's present members. Across four studies (342 children [6-12 years; 50% girls, 49% boys, 1% gender unknown; 52% White, 21% Asian, 7% Hispanic, 5% Black, 9% other, 6% race unknown] and 665 adults [47% women, 52% men, 1% gender unknown; 74% White, 10% Black, 6% Asian, 5% Hispanic, 4% other, 1% race unknown]), participants evaluated vignettes where an advantaged group could compensate a disadvantaged group that they had previously harmed or that was disadvantaged for independent reasons. Younger children believed wealthy groups should always compensate poorer ones, while older children and adults judged compensation more necessary when harm was caused by the advantaged group (Experiment 1). Older children also believed compensation and apology should be offered even when the disadvantaged group had recovered economically (Experiment 2) or when the current members of the advantageous group no longer benefit from the harm (Experiment 3). Adults, while ambivalent about monetary compensation in these cases, agreed on the need for apology. Experiment 4 replicated Experiment 2 with more realistic stimuli, confirming that adults' overall high collective responsibility ascriptions were not caused by the child-friendly materials used in Experiments 1-3. Although limited by a U.S. convenience sample, these findings suggest that children, like adults, attribute collective responsibility for harms committed by a group's predecessors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).