Preschoolers’ Understanding of Merit in Two Asian Societies

Abstract

Recent research in moral psychology have suggested that children make judgments about distributive justice early on in development, and in particular they appear to be able to use merit when distributing the benefits of a collective action. This prediction has recently been validated in various western cultures but it is unknown whether it also applies to more collectivistic cultures, in which the group might be favoured over the individual, and need over merit. Here, we investigate merit-based distributions among 81 children belonging to two Asian societies, China and Japan (mean age = 5.0 years). In line with the idea that children’s moral psychology develops early, we found that Chinese and Japanese children are able to use merit to distribute the benefits of a collective action.

The impact of social relationships on children’s distributive justice.

“…Although preschool children may not relate allocation to a relative amount or quality of work when they are verbally interviewed about hypothetical scenarios (Damon, 1975, 1980), or when sharing rewards between self and a fictional other child on jointly earned rewards (Hook, 1978; Lane & Coon, 1972; Lerner, 1974; Leventhal & Anderson, 1970), research using less demanding tasks traced the ontogenetic origins of equity sensitivity to an earlier age. For example, 21-month-old infants looked longer at scenes in which a worker and a slacker were rewarded equally (Sloane, Baillargeon, & Premack, 2012); 3- to 5-year-olds distributed more cookies to a harder worker who contributed more to baking than to a lazy worker (Baumard, Mascaro, & Chevallier, 2012; Chevallier, Xu, Adachi, van der Henst, & Baumard, 2015); 6- to 8-year-olds even discarded resources as to avoid unequal distribution between equally deserving parties (Shaw & Olson, 2012); and children aged 4–11 in 13 diverse countries all showed an age-related increase in merit-based equity preferences (Huppert et al, 2019). When asked as a coworker to share rewards for work, 3-year-olds kept fewer rewards when they had contributed less than when they had contributed more than their partner (Kanngiesser & Warneken, 2012); they also shared more with their collaborator when they received undeserved rewards than when they received deserved rewards (Hamann, Bender, & Tomasello, 2014).…”

Waste Aversion Reduces Inequity Aversion Among Chinese Children

“…In these conditions, the experimenter provided information about the recipients' characteristics, such as describing one of them as a hard worker (i.e., Hard worker-Withhold condition) or as the Experimenter's best friend (i.e., Best friend-Withhold condition). Since Chinese children take merit into account (Chevallier, Xu, Adachi, van der Henst, & Baumard, 2015;Huppert et al, 2019), the prediction for the Hard worker-Withhold condition is that the Chinese would act similarly to Western children and distribute the remaining resources to hard workers. We did not have strong predictions regarding the Best friend-Withhold condition.…”

Principios de justicia distributiva en trabajos experimentales con niños pertenecientes a sociedades de pequeña escala

“…Los resultados se explican en los tres aspectos centrales del mundo occidental propuestos por Henrich et al, (2010): la integración del mercado, la religión mundial y las instituciones penales.En atención a replicar este estudio en otras culturas que no cumplieran con las condiciones dadas por Henrich et al, (2010), el grupo de trabajo llevó a cabo el segundo de los experimentos con niños turkana de Kenia, una sociedad de pequeña escala y, por ello mismo, aislada del modo de vida occidental (Liénard et al, 2013). Posteriormente, hicieron lo propio con niños asiáticos (Chevallier et al, 2015). Este tercer estudio, en la medida en que se trabajó con niños de Osaka (Japón) y de Shangai (China), no comporta sociedades de pequeña escala, aunque se trata, a primera vista, de sociedades no Weird, pues ni Japón ni China se configuran en el primer requisito; es decir, como sociedades occidentales.…”

“…Vistos así, los hallazgos empiezan a sugerir la posibilidad de un universal psicológico, pues se dirigen a la misma dirección de los obtenidos con una sociedad Weird. Consideración que pretenderá extenderse un poco más en el examen de la situación de niños de una sociedad a larga escala, pero no Weird (Chevallier et al, 2015).…”