The Development of Chinese Children’s Decision-Making in Ultimatum and Dictator Games

Abstract

There are few studies on how Chinese children make decisions. By using the ultimatum game (UG) and dictator game (DG), previous studies in Western countries found that children offer more as they grow older-in other words, they become increasingly inclined toward fairness. Several studies showed that Chinese children may have a different trajectory with regard to social cognition and social development due to cultural differences. Hence, we hypothesized that Chinese children may differ from their Western counterparts with regard to decision making. The study adopted the UG and DG to investigate decision-making development across different age groups among Chinese children. The participants recruited for this study were 3rd, 6th, and 8th graders, and freshmen aged 8, 11, 13 and 18 years, with 18 years as an endpoint of decision-making development. Participants were organized in groups of 3 persons, and there were around 16 groups in each age group, with an approximately equal numbers of boys and girls. In both the DG and UG, children were requested to individually make an offer to an anonymous child, and later negotiated the decision as a group of three children making an offer to an anonymous group of children. Their discussions were videotaped, and the order of the two games was counterbalanced. The results revealed that (1) in both games, most children offered much more than predicted by the economic theory, showing a preference for fairness and equality; (2) children's offers decreased significantly by age in the UG, and these results apparently differed from those of previous studies on children in Western countries. A sex by grade effect was observed in the UG. Males offered more than the females in the 3rd grade, and in higher grades, their offers were similar to those of females. Males' offers declined with age, while females' offers were more stable across ages. An order effect was observed in the DG but not in the UG. When the DG was played after the UG, the age effect was similar to that in the latter, implying that children offered less as they grew older. However, when the DG was played before the UG, no significant differences were observed among the age groups. Group offers and individual offers had no significant differences in both games. The results are interpreted as follows. As they grew older, children possibly offered less in the UG due!to both moral education and the social influence of the market economy. Younger children were more affected by the values of caring, sharing, and fairness that were taught in school. They were more likely to offer half their share, which revealed their tendency toward fairness. Older children offered less since they had more interaction with the market economy. It is also possible that when children grew older, they developed a better understanding of the value of money and were less willing to share it with others.