Abstract
AbstractAlthough having universal aspects, development of a sense of fairness, a milestone in children's social development, is influenced by social and cultural forces. Yet, it scarcely has been studied in children who are at risk for their social development, let alone in deaf and hard‐of‐hearing (DHH) children, who have limited access to linguistic and social input. This study examined for the first time equity preferences in DHH children compared with hearing counterparts. About 179 children (8–11 years) and early adolescents (12–14 years) played four economic allocation games where they distributed coins between themselves and another child. Participants with and without hearing loss were similar in conditions that entailed non‐costly prosociality or self‐maximization. However, DHH participants showed weaker inequity aversion in more complex conditions: DHH children were more willing to allow other players to receive more coins than themselves, compared with hearing children and to DHH or hearing adolescents, and DHH adolescents were less willing to share resources when it was self‐costly, compared with all other groups. Findings are discussed in light of the tension between norms of social comparison and norms of prosociality, and how they are reflected in developmental trajectories for inequity aversion when access to these norms is limited.
Highlights
A sense of fairness is an important determinant in human social decisions
We examined fairness development in deaf and hard‐of‐hearing children (DHH), who are considered to be at risk for less exposure to social interactions and to dominant social norms
A sense of fairness is an important milestone in children's interpersonal, social, and moral development (Fehr et al, 2008; Güroğlu et al, 2014; Steinbeis & Singer, 2013), yet it scarcely has been studied in children who have less access to the social world
Summary
A sense of fairness is an important determinant in human social decisions. From children's moral development and social interactions to social and political norms of resource distribution, fairness decisions impact almost every as‐ pect of our lives (Fehr, Bernhard, & Rockenbach, 2008; Rutland & Killen, 2017; Shaw, 2016). We examined fairness development in deaf and hard‐of‐hearing children (DHH), who are considered to be at risk for less exposure to social interactions and to dominant social norms. By including DHH children in this field, we aimed to examine the theory of fairness development in the light of a broader human variety of social experiences
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