Influences on the amount of the reward: How five-year-old children distribute rewards Kiyomi Tsutsu (Mimasaka University)Five-year-old children were presented two stories in which each of two characters made different numbers of Origami stars; the total number of stars was 16 in one story and 12 in the other. The children allocated rewards to the characters and justified their allocations. There were three conditions in which the total number of rewards was equal to (Middle-N), less than (Small-N), or more than (Large-N) the total number of stars in each story. Most children allocated the rewards equally to the two characters in the Small-N condition, while almost half of the children did not employ an equal allocation in the Middle-N and Large-N conditions. This suggests that in the Small-N condition, if an equity-like allocation were employed, children would feel sorry for the character given very few rewards, and therefore they distributed the rewards equally. On the other hand, in the Middle-N and Large-N conditions, even when one character received fewer rewards than the other, the children did not feel that the fewer rewards were too few.

Five-year-old children were presented with two scenes in which one character made three stars and the other made nine stars. In one of the scenes, both characters' facial expressions were neutral (neutral face scene), and in the other scene the character who produced three stars had a crying face (crying face scene). Children distributed different numbers of rewards to the two characters: equal to (Middle-N), less than (Small-N), or more than (Large-N) the total number of stars in each scene. Then the children were asked for their reason after they distributed the rewards. It was found that (a) the participants' distributions depended on the total number of rewards but (b) not on the characters' facial expressions, and (c) the justifications of their distributions in the Middle-N condition were different between the scenes. These results suggest that the total number of rewards triggers an automatic distribution process, and that an ex post facto justification takes place when needed.

Five-year-old children were presented with a story in which one character made three origami stars and another made nine. Then the participants were asked to distribute small rewards to each character ("Three" or "Four" candies), and were told to use all the candies ("All" instruction), or that "You can leave some candies, if you don't want to use all the candies ('Partial' instruction)." In Study 1, almost all children distributed the candies equally (Four). Some participants (28.1%) refused the All instruction for Three, and then equally distributed the candies. They conducted equality allocations in three or all four of the conditions, giving a ratio for "Thorough Egalitarians" of 20-30%. Study 2 used looking-time measures to assess participants' judgment. Children looked longer at the amounts of production of two characters in condition Three than in condition Four. Allocation patterns were almost identical to Study 1, but the condition "Partial-Three" results were not reproduced. The paper discusses the types of egalitarian behavior and the associated production and reward quantities observed.

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