Group bias in children’s rectification of inequality using resources of different values

Abstract

Previous research has found that children can engage in rectification of pre-existing inequality by allocating more resources to individuals and groups of disadvantaged status, but less research has investigated how children address the inequalities using resources of different values, especially when they are linked to group membership (i.e., in-group or out-group member) in the first-party (Study 1) and third-party contexts (Study 2). To address these issues, children aged 5-6 years How children will react to pre-existing inequality, whether to rectify (allocate more to the disadvantaged), distribute equally, or perpetuate (allocate more to the advantaged), is an important issue in children's moral development Olson et al., 2011;. Empirical evidence showed that children as young as 4-year-olds were highly sensitive to the concern of equality and that 6-to 8-year-old children would rather throw away resources than distribute them unequally (Blake & Mcauliffe, 2011;Shaw & Olson, 2012;Wu & Gao, 2018). However, in the context of pre-existing inequality where one person has received more resources than another, the most equitable choice is to rectify inequalities by allocating more resources to the disadvantaged rather than by allocating them strictly equally. It has been found that young children seek to equalize resource distributions between others by allocating more resources to individuals with disadvantaged status, and this rectification of inequality increases with age (

The effect of competition on children's merit‐based resource allocation: The difference between interpersonal and intergroup competition

“…Specifically, children who lost were not willing to sacrifice their own interests and continued to make more equal allocations that were beneficial for themselves, whereas children who won adhered to more merit‐based allocations that were consistent with social norms and satisfied their self‐interest. Combined with the result that equal allocators were more likely to reference self‐interest at a young age and that all of the reversal allocators tended to use self‐interest (except for others ) to explain their allocating behaviours in the lose condition, we speculated that the participants were affected by self‐interest after interpersonal competition (Kanngiesser & Warneken, 2012; Pappert et al., 2017; Shaw et al., 2012), although they could gradually inhibit this tendency during allocation with age (Fehr et al., 2008; Sheskin et al., 2016; Xiao et al., 2021).…”

“…This indicated that with age, children can gradually overcome the negative impact of equality and self or group interests when conducting allocations (McAuliffe & Dunham, 2017; Rizzo et al., 2018, 2020; Xiao et al., 2019). One explanation is that with age, there is increasing personal experience with moral norms emphasizing the importance of allocating fairly and towards social norms of the wrongfulness of self‐interest and intergroup discrimination (Elenbaas et al., 2016; Elenbaas & Killen, 2016; Xiao et al., 2021). An alternative explanation is that with increasing group interaction experience, children become more concerned with maintaining and defending their social reputation, especially in the setting of this research, where children had to represent their class to compete and allocate with persons who were in the same grade and same school (Robbins & Rochat, 2011; Yazdi et al., 2020).…”

“…Thus, we analysed children's reasons only from the win and lose conditions. Children's allocation strategies were coded into five content categories based on previous research (McGuire et al, 2018;Rizzo et al, 2016;Xiao et al, 2019Xiao et al, , 2021: competition outcome, equality, self-interest, care for the other person and others. Competition outcome indicated that the participants considered the win or lose result of the competition (e.g., 'Because I won').…”

The role of between‐group competition in children's within‐group merit‐based resource allocation

“…Although these studies have yielded relatively consistent findings in third-party contexts, the question of how children allocate resources to high-versus low-merit collaborators in first-party contexts, where self-interest is affected directly, remains unclear (Rochat et al, 2009;Sheskin et al, 2016;Xiao et al, 2021). Hamann et al (2014) asked pairs of 3.5-year-old children to cooperate to obtain rewards by pulling ropes.…”

‘The system is unfair’: Uncontrollable attributions for inequality predict more equitable giving in adolescents

“…When specific attributions for resource disparities are not provided, by ages 7–8, children use equity to guide their resource allocation decisions (Rizzo & Killen, 2016; Rutland & Killen, 2017). For example, when children ages 7 and above are presented with an inequality between two groups, they tend to rectify the inequality between the groups and give more to the disadvantaged group (e.g., Elenbaas et al, 2016; Elenbaas & Killen, 2016; Shaw & Olson, 2012; Xiao et al, 2021). However, these patterns of distributive justice can shift when explanations for a disparity are provided; children ages 3–8 are more likely to perpetuate an inequality when the inequality is attributed to an internal, individual cause (i.e., effort) as compared to an external, structural cause (i.e., gender discrimination; Rizzo et al, 2020).…”