Poster #124 - “Do you reward me for my effort or my achievement?” An Exploration of Developmental Intuitions on Deservingness in China

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

Fairness is an essential consideration in human society that guides decisions of resource allocation, which, profoundly shape the wellbeing of individual lives. A central principle of fairness is equity, or the idea that those with higher merit deserve more pay (Adams, 1965). Indeed, equity is an intuitive principle with robust developmental roots: Children as young as 3 years of age reward more resources to the one who does more work (Baumard et al., 2011). Merit can be broken down to effort and outcome, and previous research mostly examined the cases when both aligned. However, one can easily imagine cases in which a lot of effort only brings about limited outcome, and vice versa, yet little work has addressed which component of merit we believe to be more deserving of rewards. The current research investigates this question developmentally.
Across our first three studies, 4- to 11-year-old Chinese (N = 912) children were told of information on two characters’ daily efforts of practicing musical instruments (either always practice very hard or seldom practice) and their long-term achievements in the corresponding musical instrument competitions (either always win or never win). Therefore, we designed a total of six different vignettes that exhausted all the unique combinations that the effort and outcome factors form, plus three vignettes where only outcome information was told, and one vignette where only effort information was told. Any given child participant only heard 3-4 vignettes. Then children were asked to reward a cookie to the character who they thought is deserving of it, and to indicate whom they liked better and whom they thought was more capable at playing the musical instrument. In our last study, we examined children’s evaluation of deservingness of being rewarded a cookie, likeability, and ability of four single characters who had 1. high effort low outcome, 2. high effort high outcome, 3. low effort low outcome, 4. Low effort high outcome.
We did not have clear predictions ahead of time. On one hand, one’s effort, different from talent, is less influenced by the uncontrollability of luck and can be precisely managed if one wills herself to exert it, and is therefore a more leveled playing field for resource allocation decisions to be made. On the other hand, one’s good outcomes are also deserving of rewards as to encourage future good outcomes. Additionally, Chinese education system, known for its drive towards high scores, might add more weight on the latter possibility.
Interestingly, we found that Chinese children saw effort, not outcome, as more deserving of rewards and more likeable as they age. This is a consistent pattern we found across all our data. Children, starting eight years of age, allocated the only reward to high effort low outcome character over low effort high outcome character (p < .001). Around the same age, they also believed that outcome by itself is not as worthy of being rewarded (p <.001), and they also liked the high effort low outcome character more than the low effort but high outcome character (p < .001).

Authors

• Zhenni Lin, The University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Alex Shaw, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan C. Levine, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Talia Berkowitz, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author