Five-year-olds understand fair as equal in a mini-ultimatum game

Abstract

In studies of children's resource distribution, it is almost always the case that "fair" means an equal amount for all. In the mini-ultimatum game, players are confronted with situations in which fair does not always mean equal, and so the recipient of an offer needs to take into account the alternatives the proposer had available to her or him. Because of its forced-choice design, the mini-ultimatum game measures sensitivity to unfair intentions in addition to unfair outcomes. In the current study, we gave a mini-ultimatum game to 5-year-old children, allowing us to determine the nature of fairness sensitivity at a period after false belief awareness is typically passed and before formal schooling begins. The only situation in which responders rejected offers was when the proposer could have made an equal offer. But unlike adults, they did not employ more sophisticated notions of fairness that take into account the choices facing the proposer. Proposers, in their turn, were also not adult-like in that they had a very poor understanding that responders would reject unequal offers when an equal one was available. Thus, preschool children seem to understand "fair=equal" in this task, but not much more, and they are not yet skillful at anticipating what others will find fair beyond 50/50 splits.

Do sex and age affect strategic behavior and inequity aversion in children?

“…Similar mixed results on age and sex have been found in recent contributions in adults (e.g., Carpenter, Burks, & Verhoogen, 2005;Eckel & Grossman, 2008;García-Gallego, Georgantzís, & Jaramillo-Gutiérrez, 2012;Saad & Gill, 2001;Solnick, 2001). In children, sex differences have not been explored (e.g., Güroglu, van den Bos, & Crone, 2009;Sutter, 2007;Wittig, Jensen, & Tomasello, 2013). However, it is conceivable that such differences may exist given that boys and girls differ in their attitudes toward game play (Vogelsang, Jensen, Kirschner, Tennie, & Tomasello, 2014).…”

“…To our knowledge, only four MUG studies have been conducted with children and adolescents (Gummerum & Chu, 2014;Güroglu et al, 2009;Sutter, 2007;Wittig et al, 2013). These studies do not offer a clear picture of the development of strategic behavior or inequity aversion.…”

“…It is conceivable that differences in the age distribution in the respective samples may have been responsible for this outcome (Güroglu et al, 2009, included only 9-year-olds, whereas Sutter, 2007. Moreover, the earliest record of disadvantageous inequity aversion is placed at 5 years of age (Wittig et al, 2013); Blake and colleagues (2015) placed it at 4 years of age, but their study was outcome-based, without the interplay of intentions. However, the rejections of the default option never happened in the Hyperunfair condition, different from the next reported age in MUG, at 9 years of age, where rejections of the default option happened in all conditions.…”

“…All MUG studies with children to date have used the strategy method except one that used the direct method (Wittig et al, 2013) using an apparatus with two shelves displaying the different amounts of stickers and pulling/pushing alternatives to propose and respond, respectively. The strategy method may be preferred over the direct method for its simplicity, low cost, and reduced sample size requirements (i.e., recycle of responses).…”

Restorative Justice in Children

“…The question was whether children would selectively ''punish'' another individual (namely as negative reciprocity or to impose a cost to decrease future occurrences of a behavior [10,11]) and whether they would do so on behalf of others. Inflicting costs on others need not always be punitive: adults and children will even suffer a cost themselves to reduce another's welfare out of a sense of fairness and even spite [12][13][14][15][16]. We contrasted intentional harm (theft) as a measure of punishment, with unfair outcomes (spitefulness), loss (frustration), and permitted taking (impulsive pulling).…”