The influence of in-group bias on care and fairness

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Moral Development

Abstract

Developing in parallel to children’s remarkable concern for fairness (McAuliffe et al., 2017) is partiality toward members of their in-group (Over, 2018). Children’s cooperative behavior is also influenced by in-group bias in minimal group contexts, which isolate in-group bias from bias based on social categories. For instance, children aged 6-8 years were more likely to punish selfish out-group members than in-group members and 6-year-olds were more punitive when an in-group member was the victim of selfishness (Jordan et al., 2014). However, when children were themselves the recipients of unfairness, they showed no in-group bias in second-party punishment of unfairness (McAuliffe & Dunham, 2016) or in their rejections of inequality (Gonzalez et a., 2020). Furthermore, children tend to be more generous toward in-group members (Sparks, et al., 2017). Importantly, this preference for in-group members becomes coupled with antisocial sentiments towards out-group members. In one study both 6- and 8- year-old children gave more positive resources to in-group members, while only 8-year-old children gave more negative resources to out-group members (Buttlemann & Böhm, 2014). The goal of the current study was to examine the influence of in-group biases on preferences across two core moral domains: fairness and care.
We investigated in-group bias on decisions related to both care and fairness in children (N=95; ages 4-9) using a minimal group technique to induce group membership. A hypothetical peer was identified as either an in-group or out-group member who would be the recipient of their allocation decisions (age- and gender-matched). To investigate the influence of in-group bias on care, participants were given two trial types (Buttlemann & Böhm, 2014) on which they could decide whether to give or throw away resources that had been identified by the partner as positive or negative (liked vs. disliked). On fairness trials participants and peer partners each received one candy and participants decided what happened to an extra candy (Shaw et al., 2012). On advantageous trials they could keep it for themselves or throw it away, on disadvantageous trials they could give it to the recipient or throw it away.
Children did not show in-group bias in their fairness decisions, in line with recent work on inequity aversion (Gonzalez et al., 2020) and the view that fairness is largely based on a concern with avoiding partiality (Shaw et al., 2012). However, there was an age-related shift from a greater concern of avoiding disadvantageous inequity towards a greater concern for avoiding advantageous inequity (Figure 1). On care trials, distribution of positive resources was greater than negative resources overall, and participants were more likely to give negative resources to out-group versus in-group recipients, a trend that was stronger amongst males (Figure 2). This study provides novel insights into how in-group bias influences the moral domains of care and fairness.

Authors

• John Corbit, Dalhousie University
  Presenting Author

• Hayley MacDougall, Dalhousie University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Stephanie Hartlin, Dalhousie University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chris Moore, Dalhousie University
  Non-Presenting Author