Fairness Considerations When I Know More than You Do: Developmental Comparisons

Abstract

The Ultimatum Game (UG) is a valuable paradigm to study fairness considerations. Here, we tested developmental differences between altruistic and strategic motivations in fairness considerations using a version of the UG with hidden conditions. Participants were proposers and could divide coins between themselves and an anonymous other. Hidden information conditions involved division of coins where some coins were only visible to the participant (e.g., 8/2 condition where, from the total of 10 coins, 8 coins were visible to both players and 2 coins only visible to the proposer). In total, 22 young adults and 79 children between ages 8 and 13 played multiple one-shot versions of the UG with hidden conditions with anonymous others. Overall analyses confirmed validity of the task and showed that participants of all age groups had strategic intentions. Specific task analyses revealed that adults divided the coins equally in the standard UG conditions, but gave less to the second player in the hidden information conditions. The developmental comparisons revealed an age × condition interaction, such that adults and 10- to 12-year-old children differentiated between standard and hidden conditions more than 8- to 9-year-old children. These findings indicate that young children have a basic understanding of different strategic motives, but that behavior of adults and older children is driven more by strategic intentions.

Do sex and age affect strategic behavior and inequity aversion in children?

“…Another possibility is the requirement of a fully developed theory of mind (i.e., perspective taking), but recent evidence indicates that better scores in theory of mind are not necessarily associated with more prosocial behavior (Cowell, Samek, List, & Decety, 2015). Therefore, it might be that at this age the proposer's concept of fairness is predominantly selfish, trying (unstrategically) to keep the most for himself or herself, in line with previous studies of resource sharing (Overgaauw, Güroglu, & Crone, 2012;Rochat et al, 2009), and only occasionally, but not consistently, taking the partner's outcome into account.…”

Development of Equity Preferences in Boys and Girls Across Adolescence

“…Furthermore, this is a time in which there are crucial changes regarding social decision‐making patterns involving fairness considerations. With increasing age, adolescents are better at incorporating social information such as consequences for others or reputation into their decisions regarding distribution of resources (Güroğlu, van den Bos, & Crone, ; Overgaauw, Güroğlu, & Crone, ; Will, Crone, van den Bos, & Güroğlu, ).…”

Prosocial Reward Learning in Children and Adolescents

“…Adolescents' increase in sensitivity to social values has been repeatedly shown by social decision making studies using one-shot interactive games such as the ultimatum game, dictator game, and trust game (Harbaugh and Krause, 2000 ; Sutter, 2007 ; Güroğlu et al, 2009 ; Almås et al, 2010 ; van den Bos et al, 2010 , 2011 , 2014 ; Overgaauw et al, 2012 ; Steinbeis et al, 2012 ; Fett et al, 2014 ; Güroğlu et al, 2014 ; Steinmann et al, 2014 ). These studies show that the basic mechanisms underlying one's prosocial tendencies such as considerations for fairness, altruism, trust, and reciprocity continue to develop from childhood through adolescence (Güroğlu et al, 2009 ; Crone and Dahl, 2012 ).…”