“Favoring my playmate seems fair”: Inhibitory control and theory of mind in preschoolers’ self-disadvantaging behaviors

Abstract

Highlights With interest involved, self-disadvantageous inequity in preschoolers rose with age. The improvement of inhibitory control explained this developmental trajectory. Better theory of mind was associated with self-disadvantaging tendency. AbstractThe purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between preschoolers' cognitive abilities and their fairness-related allocation behaviors in a dilemma of equity-efficiency conflict. Four-to 6-year-olds in Experiment 1 (N = 99) decided how to allocate 5 reward bells. In the first-party condition, preschoolers were asked to choose among giving more to self (self-advantageous inequity), wasting one bell (equity) or giving more to other (self-disadvantageous inequity); while in the thirdparty condition, they chose to allocate the extra bell to one of two equally deserving recipients or to waste it. Results showed that compared to the pattern of decision in the third-party condition, preschoolers in the firstparty condition were more likely to give the extra bell to other (selfdisadvantaging behaviors), and age, inhibitory control (IC) and theory of mind (ToM) were positively correlated with their self-disadvantaging choices, but only IC mediated the relationship between age and selfdisadvantaging behaviors. Experiment 2 (N = 41) showed that IC still predicted preschoolers' self-disadvantaging behaviors when they could choose only between equity and disadvantageous inequity. These results suggested that IC played a critical role in the implementation of selfdisadvantaging behaviors when this required the control over selfishness and envy.

Waste Aversion Reduces Inequity Aversion Among Chinese Children

“…Studies 1a, 1b, and 1c provide several insights into the differences and similarities between Chinese and Western children's inequity aversion during third-party interactions. First, we reaffirmed the existence of a gap between the extent to which Chinese and Western children are willing to waste resources (Choshen-Hillel et al, 2019;Shaw & Olson, 2012;Xie et al, 2019). Second, we found that the Chinese's lower willingness to avoid inequity resulted from a genuine dilemma between two competing considerations-that is, inequity and waste aversions.…”

“…A second explanation would follow the finding that individual differences, such as IC, mediate inequity aversion-specifically, suggesting that children with high IC could overcome an aversion to waste, thus discarding resources to maintain equal outcomes. Conversely, children with lower IC were unable to overcome the aversion to waste, thus distributing resources and consequently creating inequity (Xie et al, 2019). This explanation is possible, yet we suspect that IC differences may play a more significant role among 4-to 6-year-olds than among 7-year-olds (Best & Miller, 2010;Davidson, Amso, Anderson, & Diamond, 2006).…”

“…One distinct difference is that children from WEIRD cultures (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic;Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010;e.g., the United States, Israel) were found more willing to go as far as wasting resources to avoid inequity. However, this was not the same for their non-WEIRD counterparts (e.g., Uganda, China; Choshen-Hillel, Lin, & Shaw, 2019;Paulus, 2015;Shaw & Olson, 2012;Xie, Pei, & Su, 2019). Importantly, as the universality of inequity aversion is not yet settled, the present studies aim to address the unexplained gap in the willingness to discard resources.…”

“…One recent example regarding the impact of individual differences Equal contribution. would be Inhibitory Control (IC), which was found to predict 4-to 6-year-old Chinese's willingness to avoid inequity via waste (Xie et al, 2019). A second recent example regarding the impact of contextual factors is the perceived value of resources, and 7-year-old Americans, Israelis, and Chinese were found to be more willing to waste low-value resources than high-value ones (Choshen-Hillel et al, 2019).…”

“…To allow comparability with prior research, we maintained the age range, sample sizes, procedures, and materials as closely as possible to the studies mentioned above. Notably, while there is no overall preference between avoiding inequity or avoiding waste among 4-to 6-years-old Chinese and American (Shaw & Olson, 2012, study 1;Xie et al, 2019), inequity aversion becomes much more robust by the time Americans reach 7 years of age (Shaw & Olson, 2012). Since adherence to cultural norms is suggested to be adopted by middle childhood (Blake, Corbit, Callaghan, & Warneken, 2016;Diesendruck, Chiang, Ferera, & Benozio, 2019;House & Tomasello, 2018), we intend to expose whether the behavior of 7-yearold Chinese converges or diverges from that of their American counterparts in accounting for waste and inequity.…”