Collaboration increases children’s normative concern for fairness

Abstract

Collaboration increases equity in young children, but whether this precocious equity has a normative foundation or is primarily an interpersonal concern between collaborators remains an open question. Participants in this study were 3- to 7-year-old children (N = 104) from a rural community in Canada. In a novel third-party intervention game, children could intervene against inequitable sharing between third parties who earned resources collaboratively or individually. When resources were earned collaboratively, children intervened against inequity more often at an earlier age compared with when resources were earned individually. Children referenced equity or fairness to justify their decisions at a similar rate across the two resource acquisition contexts. These findings contribute to a growing body of evidence supporting the foundational role of collaboration in the development of fairness, providing novel evidence that this concern for fairness is indeed normative.