Symbolic distancing in sharing situations restrains children's economic behavior and potentially also their inequity aversion

Abstract

We examined whether representing a resource non-symbolically (i.e., as stickers) or symbolically (i.e., as tokens that could be exchanged for stickers) affected kindergartner's decisions in an Ultimatum/Inequity Game (N = 93). The game involved distribution offers, made by a fictitious child, that were either fair (i.e., same quantity for each child, i.e., 3:3) or disadvantageously unfair (i.e., less for the target child than for the fictitious child, i.e., 2:4 or 1:5). Children had to decide whether to accept or reject the offers. In the latter case, none of the children would get anything of the resource. Children rejected unfair offers more frequently than fair offers, and they rejected the offers involving the symbolic resource more frequently than offers involving the non-symbolic resource, which applied to a similar degree to fair and unfair offers. However, exploratory follow-up analyses of children's reactions to unfair offers revealed that children rejected the more unfair offer (i.e., 1:5) more frequently than the less unfair offer (i.e., 2:4) when the resource was represented non-symbolically instead of symbolically. The results suggest that the symbolic representation of a resource evokes economically less rational behavior in children and diminished their potential gain. Moreover, symbolic representations might level out children's differentiation of differently unfair offers. These findings are discussed in light of the subjective value approach and the Construal Level Theory.