Poster #128 - Not all Inequity is Selfish: Preschoolers’ Selective Inferences about Givers and Distributers

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

Young children show clear preferences for fair and equitable distributors (Fehr, Bernhard, & Rockenbach, 2008; Moore, 2009). Infants expect others to distribute resources equally (Schmidt & Sommerville, 2011) and prefer distributors who share equally (Geraci & Surian, 2011). As children age, they start to acknowledge merit in their distributions and in how others distribute resources (e.g., Baumard, Mascaro, & Chevalier, 2012; Blake & McAuliffe, 2011), and relate judgments of fairness to others’ moral behavior (e.g., Kenward & Dahl, 2011).
At the same time, children learn about other important social norms pertaining to distributing resources, particularly ownership. By age 3, children understand the endowment effect – they recognize others place special value on owned items (Gelman, Manczak, & Noles, 2012). Preschoolers also understand that giving an owned item is a legitimate transfer, but stealing is not (Blake & Harris, 2009). The question that motivated our research is how children integrate understanding of ownership with judgments about fair distributions. Adults have norms about giving away owned items (Shure, 1968); no one expects anyone to give away half of what they own. We sought to examine when children come to recognize the relation between ownership and social norms regarding resource distribution.
In Experiment 1, four-year-olds (N=48) were introduced to two characters who each owned 4 stickers. One group of children received 2 stickers from one character as a gift and 0 stickers from the other character (2-0 condition). The other group received 2 stickers from one character and 1 from the other (2-1 condition). Children then played a trust game in which the characters gave different advice about the location of a hidden prize. Children used the information from the more generous giver in the 2-0 condition more often (62% of the time), Wald x2 (1) = 4.26, p = .039, than in the 2-1 condition (49% of the time).
In Experiment 2, we sought to replicate children’s lack of preference in the 2-1 ownership condition while ensuring that children understood social norms of distribution when resources were not owned. A new group of 4-year-olds (N=48) were introduced to two characters. One character owned 4 stickers and gave 1 sticker to the child. The other was asked to divide 4 stickers among themselves and the child, but the stickers were clearly not owned by the character. The character allocated 3 stickers for himself and 1 to the child. Children then played the same trust game as in Experiment 1. Overall, children trusted the giver over the distributer, and critically, when children understood the owner to be nicer than the distributor, they were significantly more likely to trust the owner (65% of the time), Wald x2 (1) = 5.23, p = .022.
These studies suggest that young children evaluate distributions made by owners differently from those who distribute windfall gains, and that young children generalize the generosity of giving to other prosocial domains, such as helping achieve a reward. These findings contribute to research investigating children’s understanding of equity versus equality in different ownership contexts.

Authors

• Jayd Heilbrun, Brown University
  Presenting Author

• David Sobel, Brown University
  Non-Presenting Author