Emotional responses to inequality among preschool dyads

• In Event: 2-087 - Social influences and consequences of unfairness: Emotion, cognition, and culture

Integrative Statement

The concept of fairness is central to human morality, and is hypothesized to be universal and early developing (Haidt, 2001). Indeed, research on children’s developing concept of fairness suggests that children as young as three know something about what it means to be fair, and can accurately apply principles of fairness to make predictions about how individuals should behave in social situations (Blake et al., 2014). However, children’s own behavior when asked to share with a social partner tells a different story, as 3-year-olds behave quite selfishly (Fehr et al., 2008; Callaghan & Corbit, 2018). In fact, even though they are able to articulate how they should act, 3-year-olds say that they won’t share, despite claiming to know that sharing is the “right” thing to do (Smith et al., 2013; Blake et al., 2014).

One possible reason for these findings is that research on fairness in young children typically relies on paradigms that present children with hypothetical situations in which they are asked to share with either puppets or photographs of fictional children. This is problematic, as fairness is an inherently social construct, involving how an individual is treated in comparison to another person or some known social norm (Blake et al., 2015; Callaghan & Corbit, 2018). Thus, paradigms that do not examine children’s sharing behavior in relation to an actual social partner are at risk for mischaracterizing the developmental trajectory of fairness in young children and the factors that contribute to it.

Here, we examined the developmental differences in emotional responses to inequitable resource distributions in the presence of a peer. We paired 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 124) with a same-aged peer. After a play session, we distributed an uneven number of stickers (4 vs. 1) among the children in each pair. Next, we presented children with additional stickers and asked them to distribute them among themselves. We measured facial and verbal affective responses as well as children’s sharing behavior throughout the testing session. Preliminary results suggest that 3-year-olds respond quite positively to receiving stickers regardless of whether they received 1 or 4, showing little evidence of negative responding to the unfair distribution. In contrast, 4- and 5-year-olds who received 1 sticker displayed verbal dissatisfaction at receiving less than their partners, and 5-year-olds who received more stickers displayed verbal dissatisfaction with the unequal distribution (see Figure 1). The findings thus far have implications for the role of social influences in the development of fairness and opens the door for future examination of social-emotional factors that may drive sharing behaviors.

Authors

• Emily Kim, Rutgers University
  Presenting Author

• Vanessa LoBue, Rutgers University
  Non-Presenting Author