How “Free-Riders” Influence Children’s Attitudes toward Social Welfare Programs

• In Event: 1-201 - Diverse Perspectives on the Development of Fairness: Integrating Research on Prosociality, Ownership, and Distributive Justice

Integrative Statement

Attitudes toward social welfare programs are divergent and intense. These programs are championed by some, and much maligned by others. Attitudes towards social welfare have traditionally been attributed to learning, and they can be shifted by cues to relative changes in social status and race (e.g., see Wetts & Willer, 2018). However, a competing model has been proposed that suggests that attitudes toward social welfare programs may be biased by the application of folk-beliefs adapted for small-scale exchanges to large-scale circumstances (Boyer & Petersen, in press). Specifically, humans exhibit an impressive ability to detect and – where possible – punish or exclude “free-riders” (i.e., those who unjustly use or fail to contribute to collective resources, see Petersen, 2012). The current study explores this claim using developmental methods. Prior studies by Vogelsang and colleagues (2014) demonstrate that children are sensitive to the dynamics of free-riding. If, as Boyer and Petersen (in press) claim, folk-intuitions about free-riders generate negative attitudes toward social welfare programs, then children should exhibit negative attitudes toward collective activities that are subject to free-riding. However, if such attitudes are largely learned, then children may show relatively little sensitivity to free-riding when evaluating a social welfare program.

Children ages 3 to 5 (n=99) were presented with a simplified social welfare program via a lightly animated visual presentation: Tall “flurps” picked apples for short flurps, who could not reach them. In a neutral condition, only short flurps partook of these shared resources. In a free-rider condition, short flurps and a tall free-rider partook. Children were then asked whether or not the tall flurps should continue their activity, and whether they were “a little sure” or “very sure” about their response. Children’s responses were used to calculate composite scores for each child ranging from 1 to 4 (see Figure 1). An ANOVA with Age and Condition as between-subjects factors revealed no significant main effects or interactions. Since children’s responses did not differ by age, we collapsed each condition by age and employed a one-sample t-test to determine whether children’s initial recommendation to continue or end the program differed from chance responding. This indicated that children in both the neutral (M=3.17, SD=.86) and free-rider (M=3.02, SD=.97) conditions supported the continuation of the helpful activity at rates that significantly exceeded chance, p’s<.005.

Preschool age children exhibit an understanding of the dynamics of free-riding (Vogelsant, et al., 2014). However, in the present study, the presence of free riders did not cause them to conclude that a social welfare program should be suspended. These results suggest that objections to such programs emerge from learned attitudes. Additional studies will explore adult intuitions in more detail, and investigate how aspects of welfare program evaluation (e.g., the salience of free-riding and the scarcity of resources) influence attitudes toward activities that benefit the social good.

Authors

• Nicholaus Noles, University of Louisville
  Presenting Author

• Catherine H. McDermott, University of Louisville
  Non-Presenting Author