Poster #121 - Affective and Behavioral Responses to an Unfair Distribution

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

Researchers have suggested that children’s willingness to share is one of the earliest precursors of a sense of fairness, and that it is visible at an early age (Rheingold, Hay, & West, 1976). Infants as young as 8 months of age share toys with parents, other infants, siblings, and even strangers by showing or giving them toys and engaging them in cooperative play. However, when preschool-aged children are asked to share with their peers, they behave quite selfishly (Fehr et al., 2008; Callaghan & Corbit, 2018), and it is not until 8 years of age that children seem to show truly “fair” behavior, rejecting unfair advantageous offers (Blake & McAuliffe, 2011). Here, we explore age-related differences in children’s behavioral responses to an unfair distribution and how these behaviors predict children’s sharing behaviors. Three- to 5-year-old children (N = 124; data collection is ongoing) were paired with a same-aged peer, and after a play session, an experimenter distributed an uneven number of stickers between the two children in each pair (first distribution)—one child received 1 sticker (disadvantaged), while the other received 4 (advantaged). The experimenter then asked the children a series of interview questions to gauge their conceptual understanding and verbal affective responses to the unequal distribution. Finally, the children were given an opportunity to distribute a set of five additional stickers among themselves (second distribution). We coded children’s verbal and facial affective responses, their looking and sharing behaviors, and the total number of stickers obtained by each child at the end of the second distribution. Preliminary analyses on children’s facial affective responses to the initial distribution and the total number of stickers they obtained during the second distribution show an interesting developmental pattern. While an equal number of disadvantaged children demonstrated positive versus negative affective responses across the age range, advantaged children react more positively with age, suggesting that as children get older, they are more aware of the advantage they are given over their peer (see Figure 1). Similar developmental differences can be seen when examining the number of stickers children take for themselves during the second distribution; at age 3, advantaged and disadvantaged children typically attempt to take the same number of stickers in the second distribution, but at ages 4 and 5, the disadvantaged children begin to take on average more than half, suggesting a developing sensitivity for equality (see Figure 2). These results have implications for the role of social and contextual cues in the development of sharing behavior.

Authors

• Emily Kim, Rutgers University
  Presenting Author

• Vanessa LoBue, Rutgers University
  Non-Presenting Author