Perceived Access to Resources Affects Young Children’s Views on Fairness

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

Integrative Statement

The preschool years offer children an influx of experience recognizing and responding to fairness concerns. For instance, dividing up snacks, protecting treasured possessions, and taking turns with limited materials like toys are some of children’s earliest experiences coordinating others needs and wants with their own. Interestingly, adult’s perceptions of their own access to resources can play an important role in their attitudes about what is fair for others. Young children, too, pay close attention to how many items like toys and treats they possess in comparison to their peers. This raises the question of whether young children’s perceptions of their own access to resources affect their views on the fair use and distribution of familiar items. Early-emerging tendencies to focus on one fairness concern (e.g., who owns what) over another (e.g., who needs what) based on the perception that one has more or fewer resources than one’s peers may have important interpersonal (and even societal) implications. To investigate this question, this study assessed young children’s perceptions of their own access to resources, and examined how these perceptions related to children’s views on fair access for others.

Participants were 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 101, M = 4.14 years, SD = .57 years) of low-income backgrounds (by parent report). Using a simple measure involving stickers, most children subjectively identified their family as either low or high in access to resources. Then participants evaluated three different third-party actions: (a) a child took crayons that belonged to one peer and gave them to another in order to establish equality (b) a child took a building block that belonged to someone else, and (c) a child distributed erasers equitably between two peers.

Children who saw themselves as higher in access to resources determined that “redistributing” crayons to establish equality was “not okay” (see Figure 1) and reasoned about ownership when explaining their decision (e.g., “Because those crayons belong to him”). By contrast, children who saw themselves as lower in access to resources were more likely to support this action and more likely to reason about equity (e.g., “Because she only had one and she had five”). Perceived access to resources was not significantly associated with children’s evaluations of actions involving issues of ownership or equality in isolation.

While 44% of children in the United States live in low-income families, a far smaller percentage of studies on developing conceptions of fairness have included low-income children – an especially relevant population– as participants. In this study, only children who perceived their family to be high in access to resources were consistently against overriding ownership rights in order to establish equality. Children who viewed their family as lower in access to resources were more supportive of redistributive actions. In short, young children’s subjective perceptions of their own access to resources play a key role in their decisions about what is fair for others.

Author

• Laura Elenbaas, University of Rochester
  Presenting Author