3-201 - Children and Economic Exchanges: Competing Goals and Balancing Concerns for Others

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Children are born into an economic world driven by profit which often conflicts with other goals such as social affiliation and fairness. The papers in this symposium explore children’s allocation decisions when these different goals conflict and context varies. In the first paper, 4-6-year-olds are shown to prioritize social goals over material goals, as evidenced by a preference for smaller gifts from teammates compared to larger gifts from opponents; however, 6-year-olds, if primed with money, will shift their priorities. In the second paper, 5-10-year-olds are shown to depart from equal distributions when one person is willing/able to pay more. Children are further shown to be sensitive to whether recipients are unable vs. refusing to pay. Thus, even young children will shift away from fairness norms toward profit norms. Finally, in the third paper, allocations to owners and workers are shown to vary by age and community, such that 11-13-year-olds from rural India show a preference for owners when allocating resources, whereas 8-10-year-olds from a more populous region in India favor equal allocations. Results from this third paper show that beliefs about claims to resources are potentially linked to economic status. Thus, it is clear that children balance social/moral and economic goals and prioritize them differently depending on context. A discussant expert in moral reasoning will discuss how the balancing of competing concerns for the self and others fits within our broader understanding of children’s conceptions of fairness and equity, with considerations for group relations.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• Margaret Echelbarger, University of Michigan

Discussant

• Melanie Killen, University of Maryland, College Park

Individual Presentations

• When Less Is More: Forfeiting Economic Opportunity to Strengthen Social Bonds - Presenting Author: Tiffany T Hwang, University of Virginia; Vikram K. Jaswal, University of Virginia; Charles Kalish, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• The Influence of Money on Children’s Distributions of Items - Presenting Author: Margaret Echelbarger, University of Michigan; Susan A Gelman, University of Michigan; Charles Kalish, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Children’s Beliefs About the Claims of Owners and Workers in Two Indian Communities - Presenting Author: Peter R Blake, Boston University; Telli Davoodi, Boston University; John Corbit, Simon Fraser University; Yarrow Dunham, yarrow.dunham@yale.edu; Tara Callaghan, St. Francis Xavier University