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Abstract
How do young children develop a concept of equity? Infants prefer dividing resources equally and expect others to make such distributions. Between the ages of 3–8, children begin to exhibit preferences to avoid inequitable outcomes in their distributions, dividing resources unequally if the result of that distribution is a more equitable outcome. Four studies investigated children’s developing preferences for generating equitable distributions, focusing on the mechanisms for this development. Children were presented with two characters with different amount of resources, and then a third character who will distribute more resources to them. Three- to 8-year-olds were asked whether the third character should give an equal number of resources to the recipients, preserving the inequity, or an unequal number to them, creating an equitable outcome. Starting at age 7, children showed a preference for equitable distributions (Study 1, N = 144). Studies 2a (N = 72) and 2b (N = 48) suggest that this development is independent of children’s numerical competence. When asked to take the perspective of the recipient with fewer resources, 3- to 6-year-olds were more likely to make an equitable distribution (Study 3, N = 122). These data suggest that social perspective taking underlies children’s prosocial actions, and supports the hypothesis that their spontaneous capacity to take others’ perspectives develops during the early elementary-school years.
Highlights
How do young children develop a concept of equity? Infants prefer dividing resources and expect others to make such distributions
Generating equal distributions, in which recipients are given the same amount of resources is not necessarily the same as generating equitable distributions, in which recipients end with or move towards having the same amount of resources, or in which recipients receive resources commensurate with situational factors leading up to the distribution
An equal distribution is expected when two recipients collaborate ; but if there is an unequal amount of work required to achieve a reward, a more equitable distribution might be to give more resources to the individual who worked harder
Summary
How do young children develop a concept of equity? Infants prefer dividing resources and expect others to make such distributions. Three- to 6-year-olds create equal distributions when asked to give resources to others (in terms of number of objects), but give away the objects they value less to less preferred o thers[12,13] These findings suggest that young children integrate knowledge of social norms into judgments of equity by distributing resources or accepting distributions in ways that are not necessarily just a 1–1 correspondence between resource and recipient. Another example that has been studied concerns the relation between resources that recipients receive through windfall gains (i.e., without putting in effort) and the existing resources possessed by recipients. Other investigations on rectifying inequities show similar developmental p attern[8,15,16,17,18]
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