Aversion to Material Inequity vs. Bribery-induced Unequal Treatment

• In Event: Created (Un)Equal?: Impact of Resource Type and Value on Children's Fairness Concerns

Abstract

Children appreciate the value of sacrificing immediate personal gains for the preservation of fairness ideals: By age 8, children reject receiving more or fewer prizes than partners (Blake & McAuliffe, 2011). Further, children prefer impartial (50% chance of giving child X some goods) over partial (100% chance of giving child X some goods) procedures (Shaw & Olson, 2014). Such findings highlight children’s advocacy for choices that grant equal material outcomes, or equal opportunity to obtain material goods. Is this early preference sufficient to prompt the rejection of complex, inequality-inducing acts like bribery?

Bribery also leads to unfair treatment, yet it is possible that bribes represent a more cognitively opaque case of inequality for children to refuse than material inequality: A decision-maker who becomes partial to a briber is harming other candidates only indirectly. The studies below evaluated children’s reasoning about bribery and its relation to material inequity aversion.

In study 1, 33 younger (M = 7;1) and 33 older (M = 9;2) elementary schoolers heard stories about four contests (e.g., singing). On two trials, judges accepted a gift before choosing winners, and on two trials, judges rejected the gifts. To measure children’s ability to detect gift-induced bias in decision-making, they were asked to guess who judges would pick as the winner. Older, (M = 1.33, SE = .15 vs. M = 0.55, SE = .14), and younger children (M = 1.33, SE = .13 vs. M = 0.97, SE = .13) predicted that judges who accepted the gift would be more likely to pick their benefactor as winner, versus judges who rejected it.

In study 2, 24 7-year-olds (M = 7;7) and 24 9-year-olds (M = 9;8) helped an experimenter with two tasks (within subjects, counterbalanced):

+Candy task (material inequity): The experimenter asked participants to help distribute five candies between the experimenter and roommate "A". After reaching a 2-2 split, the experimenter asked what to do with the fifth candy, “If you were me, what would you do? Keep the candy or give it back to roommate "B" who brought it?”

A Fisher’s test indicated no age effects, p = .49. All 7-year-olds, and all but two of the 9-year-olds recommended giving the candy back to roommate "B".

+Contest task (bribery): The experimenter asked participants to help select the winner of a drawing contest. Participants saw two drawings from supposed contestants. One of the drawings included a $5 gift card, offered in exchange for 1st place. The experimenter asked participants, “If you were me, what would you do? Keep the gift or give it back to the kid who sent it?”

A Fisher’s test indicated that participants’ likelihood to recommend accepting gifts meant as bribes decreased as they were older, p = .015. A substantial proportion of 7-year-olds endorsed taking the gift (54%), whereas most 9-year-olds recommended to send it back (83%).

Overall, these results suggest that partiality detection and material inequity aversion are not sufficient to reject more abstract forms of unequal treatment, like bribe-induced, biased decision-making.

Authors

• Boli Reyes-Jaquez, University of New Hampshire
  Presenting Author

• Melissa A. Koenig, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities