The Development of Intergroup Resource Allocation: The Coordination of Ingroup Norms and Moral Goals

• In Event: 3-171 - Group Identity, Group Norms and Children’s Moral Judgments in Diverse Competitive Intergroup Contexts

Integrative Statement

Background

Decisions about morally relevant resource allocation between groups involve coordinating thinking in the domains of morality (is this a fair decision?) and social-conventions (what would my group think?) (Turiel, 2015). These decisions require consideration of group-level norms, as well as the goals of the resource allocation task. Competition and cooperation are important motivators of children and adolescent’s behavior (Abrams et al., 2015). Less is known about how the influence of norms of competition and cooperation on resource allocation differs as the goal of a resource allocation decision varies. This study investigated age-related changes regarding how individuals allocated resources when considering both cooperative and competitive ingroup norms within prosocial and group-focused goal contexts.
Hypotheses
H1. Children were expected to prioritize a prosocial goal by allocating more to their ingroup in order to benefit a welfare cause.
H2. Adolescents and adults were expected to prioritize equality regardless of the goal context.
H3. Adolescents and adults who allocated resources equally were expected to make reference to the importance of fair competition in order to justify this.

Methods
Participants (n = 263) included children (Mage = 8.69), adolescents (Mage = 13.81) and adults (Mage = 20.89) from an ethnically diverse area in the South East of Great Britain.
Ingroup Norm: Participants were inducted into school clubs and informed about a forthcoming inter-institution arts contest. Their group held a norm of either cooperation (i.e. we want to help other groups) or competition (i.e. we don’t want to help other groups).
Goal Context: The goal of the art contest was described to participants as either Prosocial (to help a charity cause) or Group-Focused (to beat other teams in the contest).
Participants allocated resources (money for special materials to help produce better art) between an ingroup and outgroup. They justified their allocation decision in an open-ended “why?” question.

Results
Resource Allocation: Resource allocation decisions depended on age, ingroup norm and goal context, F(2, 228) = 5.86, p = .016, η2 = .03 (see Figure 1). In the Prosocial goal context, children allocated more resources to their ingroup when their group held a competitive norm, compared to a cooperative norm.
Social Reasoning: Resource allocation justifications differed as a function of participant age, ingroup norm and allocation strategy, χ2(21, N = 189) = 81.97, Nagelkerke R2 = .39, p < .001. Adolescents and adults referenced fair competition to justify an equal allocation decision.

Discussion
These findings demonstrate a developmental shift from childhood to adolescence in the coordination of goals and ingroup norms when allocating resources between social groups. Crucially, children apply goal contextual information in a different manner to adolescents and adults. Children prioritize a prosocial goal over resource equality, but only when their group wants to behave competitively and not help the outgroup. Adolescents and adults, by comparison, prioritize equality in an intergroup setting, and emphasize the importance of fair competition. These results have important implications when considering the allocation of communal resources in competitive contexts where conflict may arise, even with an ostensibly cooperative goal.

Authors

• Luke McGuire, Goldsmiths, University of London
  Presenting Author

• Michael T. Rizzo, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melanie Killen, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Adam Rutland, Goldsmiths, University of London
  Non-Presenting Author