Poster #127 - Ownership versus Equity: Young Children’s Judgments about Resource Redistribution

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

In early childhood, children’s conceptions of fairness expand to include both concerns for equity and respect for ownership rights. For instance, while 3- to 4-year-olds focus on equality when distributing familiar items like toys between peers, 7- to 8-year-olds prioritize equity by distributing more resources to an individual with less. At the same time, children as young as 2 years of age demonstrate understanding of ownership (i.e., who owns what), and by age 3 children uphold others’ rights to control who uses their property. In many peer interactions, these two fundamental moral concerns are in conflict with one another, such as when one child needs an item that belongs to another child. Bringing together two related lines of research, this study aimed to understand how young children weigh and prioritize concerns for equity and ownership when they are in conflict with one another.

Participants ages 3- to 8-years-old (N = 192, MAge = 5.28 years, SD = 1.48 years, low- to middle-income) evaluated three illustrated vignettes about peer interactions involving familiar items like stickers. Children used a smiley-face scale from “really not okay” to “really okay” to indicate their evaluations of: (1) distributing erasers equitably between recipients (support for equity), (2) taking toy blocks from an owner (support for ownership rights), and (3) redistributing crayons from a well-resourced peer to achieve equity with an under-resourced peer. For the third vignette participants also gave verbal reasoning for their evaluation and indicated the extent to which they agreed with a third party who deemed the action “okay” because it established equity or “not okay” because it violated ownership rights.

In straightforward peer interactions, children supported equitable resource distribution and negatively evaluated a violation of ownership rights. Evaluations diverged, however, when the two fairness concerns were in conflict with each other. Older children and children who were more supportive of equity were more likely to say that redistribution (i.e., taking crayons from a well-resourced peer to achieve equity with an under-resourced peer) was “okay” (Table 1). Further, children who reasoned about equality in this context (e.g., “They should both have the same amount”) were more likely to support the action while children who focused on ownership (e.g., “Because those were hers”) were more likely to condemn it. Interestingly, with age, children were more likely to agree with a third party who asserted that the action was “okay” (for equity reasons) and a third party who asserted it was “not okay” (for ownership reasons) (Figure 1).

These results highlight both age-related changes in children’s conceptions of fairness and contextual differences in children’s support for equity and ownership rights. With age, children were more receptive to rationales supporting both fairness concerns, even if these third party opinions differed from children’s own decisions. Further, the results pinpoint how young children who strongly value equity were willing to set aside one peer’s ownership rights in order to ensure both peers had the resources that they needed.

Authors

• Aya Bukres, University of Rochester
  Presenting Author

• Yueyao Wang, University of Rochester
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura Elenbaas, University of Rochester
  Non-Presenting Author