Waste-aversion overrides Inequity-aversion among 7-years-old Chinese

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Moral Development

Abstract

An underlying aspect of the development of fairness is the aversion from unequal treatments towards equally deserving parties. By 7-years-of-age, children from western cultures are even willing to waste resources in order to avoid inequity (Shaw & Olson, 2012). In order to assess the robustness of inequity-aversion, we have addressed children who live in a culture that emphasises the value of “Thrift” and followed a well-established procedure to provide a valid cross-cultural comparison (Choshen-Hillel et al., 2019). In this basic procedure, Chinese children were presented with two unfamiliar peers, and had to decide whether to distribute one resource to one of them (thus create inequity) or rather waste it (thus avoid inequity).

The first set of studies addressed 3rd-party interactions (N=83; Mage=7.05; SD=0.31; 49% girls) and provide several insights regarding differences and similarities between Chinese and Western children. First, Study 1A reaffirmed the existence of a gap between Chinese and Western children’s willingness to avoid inequity via waste, as only ~40% of Chinese were willing to waste resources (Fig. 1A) whereas 100% of Americans were willing to do so (Shaw & Olson, 2012). Second, Study 1B suggests that Chinese’s lower willingness to avoid inequity via waste stem from a genuine dilemma between “inequity” and “waste” aversions, and when a wasteful option was replaced with a non-wasteful one (i.e., withhold), Chinese avoided inequity as Americans do (i.e., ~80%, Fig. 1B). Third, Chinese’s decisions to avoid inequity was not only manifested by withholding resources, but also by distributing them in relevant contexts, e.g., towards “hard workers” (similarly to Americans). Moreover, unlike Americans, Chinese were willing to accept inequity to favor the Experimenter’s friend (Fig. 1B). Forth, Study 1C replicated parts of Study 1B and further confirmed that children do not distribute resources following mere distinct characteristics of peers (e.g., Impoliteness, Shirt) (Fig. 1C).

The second set of studies addressed 1st-person interactions, as to examine whether “waste-aversion” is as robust when personal-interests are involved (N=84; Mage=7.20; SD=0.33; 48% girls). The findings reveal that in the presence of “waste”, Chinese were more willing to accept self-disadvantageous distributions than Americans (i.e., 92% vs. 55%, respectively) (Fig. 2A; Shaw et al., 2016), and were also more willing to accept self-advantaguous distributions than Americans (i.e., 81% vs. 15%, respectively) (Fig. 2A; Shaw & Olson, 2012). Notably, in the absence of “waste”, Chinese’s acceptance of self-advantageous distributions was considerably lower and was similar to that of Americans (i.e., 16% vs. 15%)(Fig. 2B; Shaw & Olson, 2012).

This set of five separate studies expands our understanding regarding the development of fairness by demonstrating that “waste-aversion” (i.e., object-related consideration) and “friendship” (i.e., relational-consideration) may be at least as important as “inequity-aversion” among Chinese. Moreover, Chinese’s differences in accounting for “waste” and “friendship” fit well with a developmental trajectory that was found in other object- and relational domains (e.g., Diesendruck et al., 2019; Shaw & Olson, 2012). In addition to the role of these cultural factors, non-cultural factors that were pre-considered will be discussed as well (e.g., methods, SES).

Authors

• Zhen Zhang, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
  Non-Presenting Author

• Avi Benozio, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  Presenting Author