Fairness in Distributive Justice by 3- and 5-Year-Olds Across Seven Cultures

Abstract

This research investigates 3- and 5-year-olds' relative fairness in distributing small collections of even or odd numbers of more or less desirable candies, either with an adult experimenter or between two dolls. The authors compare more than 200 children from around the world, growing up in seven highly contrasted cultural and economic contexts, from rich and poor urban areas, to small-scale traditional and rural communities. Across cultures, young children tend to optimize their own gain, not showing many signs of self-sacrifice or generosity. Already by 3 years of age, self-optimizing in distributive justice is based on perspective taking and rudiments of mind reading. By 5 years, overall, children tend to show more fairness in sharing. What varies across cultures is the magnitude of young children's self-interest. More fairness (less self-interest) in distributive justice is evident by children growing up in small-scale urban and traditional societies thought to promote more collective values.

Young children, but not chimpanzees, are averse to disadvantageous and advantageous inequities

“…Various studies report different results depending on the context in which children are observed, the role of adults in the process, and the alternatives children have at their disposal in the test situation. Most straightforward, in thirdparty situations where they must distribute resources among others, children from as young as 3 years show a very strong bias for equal distributions (e.g., Frydman & Bryant, 1988;Olson & Spelke, 2008;Peterson, Peterson, & McDonald, 1975;Rochat et al, 2009;Shaw & Olson, 2012). When young children themselves are among the recipients, however, the situation becomes more complicated.…”

5–8-Year-Old Children’s Perceived Procedural Justice

“…Children are thought to develop an increasing concern about justice over the course of their development (Rochat et al, 2009). During middle childhood, their valuing of procedural justice highly increases and, at the age of 8, children's stage of procedural justice is almost similar to that of adults .…”

“…Tokiems rezultatams įtakos gali turėti ir kiti veiksniai, pavyzdžiui, kultūra. Didžioji dalis suvokto procedūrinio teisingumo tyrimų atlikta Jungtinėse Amerikos Valstijose su vakarietiškoje kultūroje augusiais vaikais (Rochat et al, 2009;Shaw, 2013), o, anot P. S. Churchland (2011), tai, kaip bus suvoktas teisingumas ir…”

How preschoolers react to norm violations is associated with culture

“…Some of these differences have been attributed to differences in cultural values: More fairness in distributive justice is evident in children growing up in societies with more collective values (Rochat et al, 2009). The interplay of particular cultural values and norm enforcement has yet to be investigated.…”