Cultural differences in the development of a preference for scarce objects.

Abstract

Adults value scarce objects, such as rare precious stones and limited edition items. This valuation may derive from an understanding of market forces and sociological considerations, but it may also be related to more basic cognitive and motivational processes. The present studies addressed these possibilities by investigating the development and cross-cultural prevalence of a preference for scarce objects. Children (N = 366) from Israel and Taiwan, ranging from 4 to 11 years of age, were given a choice between a scarce and an abundant reward. We found that whereas a preference for the scarce appeared among Israelis by age 7, it never appeared among the Taiwanese. These findings indicate that a scarcity preference emerges already at age 7, but only among children living in a culture that emphasizes self-individuality. These findings are discussed in light of cultural accounts of the development of self-motivations.

The Development of a Scarcity Bias

“…This difference could potentially explain the change in infants’ responding from Study 1 to Study 2. In fact, a similar change is seen when comparing 4‐year‐olds’ responses in Study 3 here—wherein all stickers were presented as coming from a single set—to the responses of 4‐year‐olds in Diesendruck et al ()—wherein stickers were not presented as coming from the same set. In the latter, 4‐year‐olds were more likely to choose stickers of an abundant type.…”

“…In Study 3, we continued tracing the development of such a bias, by moving to older participants, namely 3‐ to 6‐year‐olds. These were ages previously found to capture potential changes in children’s scarcity bias (Diesendruck et al, ; John et al, ). Given that the procedure used in Study 2 showed more promise for revealing a scarcity bias, in Study 3 we adopted the same procedure.…”

“…Accordingly, one would have expected such a bias to emerge only at an age children have some such understanding—which is arguably by school‐age (Thompson & Siegler, ) or even early adolescence (Fox & Kehret‐Ward, ; John, ; Leiser & Beth‐Halachmi, ; Valkenburg & Cantor, ; Williams et al, ). Indeed, one experiment to date that assessed the development of a scarcity bias, documented its emergence at around age 10 (Echelbarger & Gelman, ), another at 7 (Diesendruck et al, ), and a third at 6 (but only with unknown items, either in a competitive context, or only among boys is noncompetitive ones; John et al, ). As described in the Introduction, it is possible that the difference between the findings has to do with the methodological changes incorporated into this study, aimed precisely at simplifying the task.…”

“…The authors concluded that this pattern is consistent with the need for uniqueness account of the scarcity bias, with 6‐year‐olds developing a fear of missing out on an opportunity to establish their distinctiveness from potential competitors. Finally, in a further recent study, Diesendruck, Chiang, Ferera, and Benozio () provided 4‐ and 7‐year‐old Israeli children, and 4‐ to 11‐year‐old Taiwanese children, a choice between a scarce and an abundant resource. It was found that a robust preference for scarce objects appeared at age 7 years, but only among Israeli children.…”

“…This change evidently required further modifications in the method, so as to make the task amenable to infants. For instance, rather than asking participants for their preferences for pictured objects (as done by Echelbarger & Gelman, ), we gave them an actual choice between objects they would get to keep (similar to Diesendruck et al, ; John et al, , in this respect). A second methodological change is that instead of presenting novel (as in Echelbarger & Gelman) or unknown (as in John et al) objects for children to choose from, we presented familiar objects that varied on a particular characteristic (i.e., balls that varied in color, or stickers of different types of balls).…”