Procedural (in)justice in children: Children choose procedures that favor their ingroup

Abstract

Research has shown that both ingroup bias and concern for procedural justice emerge early in development; however, these concerns can conflict. We investigated whether 6- to 8-year-old children are more influenced by procedural justice versus ingroup favoritism in a resource allocation task. In our first study, children played a novel spinner game in which they chose among fair, ingroup favoring, and outgroup favoring procedures to decide whether a resource would go to an unfamiliar ingroup or outgroup recipient. We found that 6- to 8-year-olds overall chose ingroup favoring procedures. However, this tendency decreased with age; whereas younger children were more likely to select procedures that were advantageous to their ingroup, older children (7- and 8-year-olds) mostly chose fair procedures. Our second study investigated the motivations underpinning children’s choices by testing whether children’s fair procedure choices were in part driven by a desire to appear fair. Here we varied whether children made procedure choices in public, allowing them to manage their reputation, versus in private, where reputational concerns should not guide their choices. We found that from 6 to 8 years of age children chose ingroup favoring procedures and that this tendency was slightly stronger when choosing in private. Taken together, our research suggests that ingroup favoritism often trumps procedural justice in resource allocation tasks, especially for younger children and especially when reputation is not in play.