Children’s Evaluations of Hypocritical Moral Inconsistency

• In Event: Fairness and Inequality

Abstract

Adults recognize that several different decision rules can be used to resolve disagreements. For example, one can share resources equally or use a merit principle in which the harder worker gets more. Either rule could be considered fair, but what seems less fair is inconsistently using these rules depending on what will advantage you (Descioli et al., 2014). Here, we explore children’s evaluations of such moral inconsistency.

In Experiment 1, we explore how children (N = 120, 4- to 9-years old) evaluate an allocator who uses a consistent versus inconsistent moral rule when deciding how to share with others. In this story, the allocator cleans up a room with another character on two separate days and must decide how to allocate resources for cleaning. In both conditions, the allocator does worse than the other on Day 1 and better than the other on Day 2. On Day 2, the allocator always uses a merit principle and thus gives more to herself. What differs between conditions is how the allocator shares and what decision rule she used on Day 1. Children are asked to make a fairness evaluation of each distribution on both days.

In the morally consistent condition, the allocator uses a merit principle on both days, giving more to the other child on Day 1 and more to self on Day 2. In the morally inconsistent condition, the allocator used an equality principle on Day 1 (where she did worse) and changes principles on Day 2 to merit, giving more to self on Day 2. As predicted, children thought the exact same decision on Day 2, giving more to the self based on merit, was less fair in the morally inconsistent condition as compared to the morally consistent condition because the allocator’s previous decision made the Day 2 decision look hypocritical. Importantly, we found no such differences on Day 1 evaluations suggesting that children were responding to the moral inconsistency (Figure 1). We found no age effects.

In a second experiment (N = 120, 4- to 9-years old), we investigate if children specifically dislike inconsistency generally or if they specifically dislike hypocritical moral inconsistency. Here, allocators in both conditions do better at cleaning the room on Day 1 and give themselves more based on merit. On Day 2, both endorse an equality rule that is inconsistent with the merit based rule that they endorsed on Day 1. However, one character endorses an inconsistent rule in a self-serving way (endorsing equality when she did worse) that may seem hypocritical and the other in a self-sacrificing way (endorsing equality when she did better). Given that children saw identical stimuli across both conditions for Day 1, we only asked about fairness evaluations of Day 2. Our results suggest children dislike moral inconsistency rather than just general inconsistency (Figure 2). That is, they negatively evaluate inconsistency that is self-serving relative to self-sacrificing. These studies provide insight into children’s intuitions about fairness and hypocrisy, particularly regarding how decision rules can be used across contexts.

Authors

• Hannah Hok, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Alex Shaw, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author