ABSTRACT
In this chapter we shall be looking at economic socialisation. As children grow and develop from infancy through to adolescence, they learn about different aspects of their world. They learn, for example, that objects still exist although they are hidden behind cushions and that there is still the same amount of water to drink in a glass even though it’s been poured into a tall thin container where the level is much higher than before (Piaget, 1970). Both of these achievements reflect significant changes in cognitive development. More recently psychologists have been interested in how children understand the beliefs, desires and intentions of other people (e.g. Damon, 1978) and how and when children understand that someone is lying or can have false beliefs. All of these strands of development, how children understand the world of inanimate objects and the motives of other people, are important, but there seems to be something missing. Children live in a world of goods and services where things have to be bought and sold and where people work, save, invest and pay taxes. This world is full of brands that are advertised from billboards, on television screens and also on the World Wide Web. It is probably not water that is being poured in real life but Coke and the objects that are hidden behind cushions are members of the Polly Pocket family. And yet psychologists have paid little attention to the world of goods and services although it is present and pervasive in practically all cultures and is an important part of the life of most children. Before we explore the research and theories in this area we have to consider why this is such a neglected area in developmental psychology. We shall see that not only has economic socialisation through childhood suffered from relative neglect by academic psychologists but that when the issues and problems in this area are tackled, they are approached in certain predictable ways that preclude other methodologies and theories.
