The Development of a Preference for Procedural Justice for Self and Others

Yarrow Dunham,Tom R Tyler,Allison Durkin

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-36072-1

Abstract

Adults prefer fair processes (“procedural justice”) over equal outcomes (“distributive justice”). This preference impacts their judgments of others in addition to their willingness to cooperate, raising questions about whether similar preferences drive judgments and behavior in children. The present study examines the development of this preference for procedural justice by testing children’s attitudes towards procedural justice using a resource allocation task in both first- and third-party contexts, and in contexts in which the procedurally just process does versus does not create distributional injustice. Results from children 4 to 8 years of age demonstrate that children robustly attend to and prefer procedural justice over distributive justice. However, younger children are less likely to prefer methods that are procedurally just or that create distributively just outcomes in first-party contexts, when distributive injustice might favor them. Results suggest an interplay between abstract justice concerns and the emerging ability to override selfishness.

Highlights

A robust conception of fairness requires attention to outcomes and to the procedures that produce those outcomes
A central focus of our inquiry is whether preferences for procedurally just procedures change based on two critical factors that have not yet been explored at length: whether the child him or herself stands to benefit from a less procedurally just procedure, and whether the procedurally just procedure does versus does not create distributional injustice
Our prediction that children would prefer a procedurally just process that conserves rather than destroys a resource was supported for younger children but not older children; younger children preferred to flip a coin to distribute an extra resource, even though it resulted in distributional inequality, while older children appeared indifferent between these two options

Summary

Introduction

A robust conception of fairness requires attention to outcomes and to the procedures that produce those outcomes. Tyler found that defendants that did not have a hearing often left the court unhappy, even if their tickets were dismissed Tyler contends that this result is best explained by a model of outcome satisfaction that is grounded in procedural fairness: defendants felt that failing to receive a hearing made the process capricious, violating procedural justice. By 3-years of age, children direct a protagonist to distribute resources among third parties, regardless of the relationship of the protagonist to the other parties, indicating knowledge that they should enact distributive justice[14] This preference for equal outcomes is known as inequity aversion[15,16,17]

Methods

Results

Conclusion