The effects of grade level, context, and family type on male and female adolescents’ distributive justice reasoning

Abstract

This study investigated ninth and twelfth grade students’ (N=640) distributive justice reasoning. Participants read stories presenting characters that varied in personal characteristics (popularity, productivity, need, and appearance), family type (biologically related/stepsiblings), and context (work/education). Adolescents allocated rewards to story characters, provided rationales for allocations, and judged the fairness of allocation patterns representing different justice principles. Older adolescents were more likely to favor equity and benevolence principles than younger adolescents on all three measures. Older adolescents, especially female students, also took kinship and contextual factors into account more often than younger adolescents. Male students tended to favor equity across conditions; female students’ views of fairness showed greater nuance, varying to a greater degree with relationship and contextual factors. Findings suggest distributive justice reasoning continues to develop through late adolescence, probably due to age‐related cognitive and socialization factors and experiences. Further, findings suggest that gender differences in adult justice reasoning arise in adolescence.

Perceptions of Stepfathers’ Obligations to Financially Support Stepchildren

“…Equity is achieved when each person receives outcomes proportionate to their inputs (Sprecher and Schwartz 1994); equality involves dividing rewards (or obligations) equally among the people involved, and the principle of need prescribes distributing resources based on the needs of the people involved (Clark and Chrisman 1994). A number of other principles of distributive justice, such as reciprocity (repaying past contributions) have also received empirical support (Drake and Lawrence 2000;McGillicuddy-De Lisi et al 2008). Most people apply these principles in response to situational cues (Clark and Chrisman 1994;Drake and Lawrence 2000;McGillicuddy-De Lisi et al 2008).…”

“…A number of other principles of distributive justice, such as reciprocity (repaying past contributions) have also received empirical support (Drake and Lawrence 2000;McGillicuddy-De Lisi et al 2008). Most people apply these principles in response to situational cues (Clark and Chrisman 1994;Drake and Lawrence 2000;McGillicuddy-De Lisi et al 2008).…”

Children's emotional responsiveness and sociomoral understanding and associations with mothers' and fathers' socialization practices

“…Girls reported more personal distress than did boys, a frequently reported finding (Eisenberg et al, 1988), and rule-orientation also was less of a motive for prosocial behavior for boys than it was for girls. Girls are more likely than are boys to appeal to rules of fairness and principles of benevolence (McGillicuddy-De Lisi, De Lisi, & Gulik, 2008) and demonstrate more knowledge of rules, more rule compliance, and more rule orientation with regard to safety than are boys (Granié, 2007). Parents and teachers may expect girls to be more compliant, which may foster more explicit teaching of rules to girls-a hypothesis that should be investigated in future research.…”

Unravelling Children’s Perceptions of Parental Differential Treatment

“…Social relations between characters influence distributive justice reasoning (McGillicuddy-De Lisi et al, 2008). This finding might be extended to biological relatedness between family members.…”

“…Also, social relationships among the characters to whom the allocations are made, influence distributive justice reasoning. The benevolence-rule is favored on top of the productivity-based rule for family members (McGillicuddy-De Lisi et al, 2008) and children highly favor the equality rule when it concerns siblings (Thomson & Jones, 2005).…”