Poster #118 - Inequity Aversion in low SES Argentine Children

• In Event: 2-002 - Special Poster Session 05 with Continental Breakfast Reception
  In Poster Session: PS 05 - International Section

Integrative Statement

Our preferences for fair distributions seem to be an extended characteristic of human beings. When people get unequal outcomes, stress levels rise in front of injustice (Austin, 1974) and inequity aversion may emerge. Inequity aversion is the resistance people make to unequal distributions in order to obtain equity (Fehr, 1999). It seems easier for people to react with aversion when the situation is disadvantageous than when it is advantageous. To study when this behavior appears in childhood Blake and colleges (2011) developed the “Inequity game” that consists on sitting two children facing each other and making them offers of candies trough three conditions: equity, advantageous inequity, and disadvantageous inequity. Only one of the children can decide to accept or reject the researcher’s offers. They found that children react with aversion first to disadvantageous situations, around 4 years old, and later to advantageous situations, around 8 years old. Many studies suggest that children tend to act with more justice as they grow, but this development varies across different cultures (Rochat 2009; Paulus, 2015); in order to deeper understand fairness behaviors in childhood we need to know how they manifest in different cultures and SES levels. Using the Inequity game, our first objective is to study if the number of rejections differs for each condition of offers(equity, advantageous inequity and disadvantageous inequity) controlling the age and sex of the children. Our second objective is to study if age influences the level of rejection in the same different conditions controlling the sex, in an Argentine low SES sample. The sample consisted of 177 kids from low SES ranging ages from 6 to 11 years old M = 8,55, SD = 1,6) and 96 of them were boys (54,2%). Our results show that children do differ in the number of rejections depending on the offers made by the researcher, rejecting more to disadvantageous offers than to advantageous offers [MANOVA Hotelling's (2, 173) = 7.41, p<.001, eta = .08] See table 1. Moreover, we found statistically significant differences in the levels of rejection made by the children according to age [MANOVA Hotelling's (15, 503) = 1.20, p <. 01, eta = .06]. Specifically, we found differences in the number of rejection of equity offers [Hotelling's (1, 171) = 3.42, p <. 01, eta =.09] but not inequality offers according to age [advantageous offers Hotelling's (5, 171) = .59, p = .71; disadvantageous offers Hotelling's (5, 171) = 1.25, p = .30]. However, it can be seen a decreasing tendency of rejections in disadvantageous offers and an increasing tendency of refusals to advantageous offers as children get older See table 2. These findings show the specific characteristic of this sample that do not match with WEIRD cultures patterns that show an emergence of advantageous inequity aversion starting at 8 years old, manifesting the importance of culture in the socialization of justice behaviors.

Authors

• Paulina Guerra, CONICET
  Presenting Author

• Belén Mesurado, National Scientific and Technical Research Council
  Non-Presenting Author

• Florencia De Sanctis, CIIPME
  Non-Presenting Author