The present study investigated age-related changes regarding children's (N = 136) conceptions of fairness and others' welfare in a merit-based resource allocation paradigm. To test whether children ...at 3- to 5-years-old and 6- to 8-years-old took others' welfare into account when dividing resources, in addition to merit and equality concerns, children were asked to allocate, judge, and reason about allocations of necessary (needed to avoid harm) and luxury (enjoyable to have) resources to a hardworking and a lazy character. While 3- to 5-year-olds did not differentiate between distributing luxury and necessary resources, 6- to 8-year-olds allocated luxury resources more meritoriously than necessary resources. Further, children based their allocations of necessary resources on concerns for others' welfare, rather than merit, even when one character was described as working harder. The findings revealed that, with age, children incorporated the concerns for others' welfare and merit into their conceptions of fairness in a resource allocation context, and prioritized these concerns differently depending on whether they were allocating luxury or necessary resources. Further, with age, children weighed multiple moral concerns including equality, merit, and others' welfare, when determining the fair allocation of resources.
To investigate whether children rectify social inequalities in a resource allocation task, participants (N=185 African-American and European-American 5–6year-olds and 10–11year-olds) witnessed an ...inequality of school supplies between peers of different racial backgrounds. Assessments were conducted on how children judged the wrongfulness of the inequality, allocated new resources to racial ingroup and outgroup recipients, evaluated alternative allocation strategies, and reasoned about their decisions. Younger children showed ingroup favorability; their responses differed depending on whether they had witnessed their ingroup or an outgroup at a disadvantage. With age, children increasingly reasoned about the importance of equal access to school supplies and correcting past disparities. Older children judged the resource inequality negatively, allocated more resources to the disadvantaged group, and positively evaluated the actions of others who did the same, regardless of whether they had seen their racial ingroup or an outgroup at a disadvantage. Thus, balancing moral and social group concerns enabled individuals to rectify inequalities and ensure fair access to important resources regardless of racial group membership.
Key constituents of morality emerge during the first 4 years of life. Recent research with infants and toddlers holds a promise to explain the origins of human morality. This article takes a ...constructivist approach to the acquisition of morality, and makes three main proposals. First, research on moral development needs an explicit definition of morality. Definitions are crucial for scholarly communication and for settling empirical questions. Second, researchers would benefit from eschewing the dichotomy between innate and learned explanations of morality. Based on work on developmental biology, we propose that all developmental transitions involve both genetic and environmental factors. Third, attention is needed to developmental changes, alongside continuities, in the development of morality from infancy through childhood. Although infants and toddlers show behaviors that resemble the morally relevant behaviors of older children and adults, they do not judge acts as morally right or wrong until later in childhood. We illustrate these points by discussing the development of two phenomena central to morality: Orientations toward helping others and developing concepts of social equality. We assert that a constructivist approach will help to bridge research on infants and toddlers with research on moral developmental later in childhood and into adulthood.
Adolescents' social judgments and emotion attributions about exclusion in three contexts, nationality, gender, and personality, were measured in a sample of 12-and 15-year-old Swiss and non-Swiss ...adolescents (N = 247). Overall, adolescents judged exclusion based on nationality as less acceptable than exclusion based on gender or personality. Non-Swiss participants, however, who reflected newly immigrated children to Switzerland, viewed exclusion based on nationality as more wrong than did Swiss participants and attributed more positive emotions to the excluder than did Swiss participants. Girls viewed exclusion in nationality and personality contexts as less legitimate than did boys, and they attributed less positive emotions to excluder target in the nationality context than did boys. The findings extend existing research on exclusion by focusing on both emotion attributions as well as judgments and by investigating exclusion in a sample that included a recent immigrant group.
Developmental continuity between infants' understanding of intentional agency (goals, beliefs, and desires) and young children's attributions of moral intentions were studied in a 4-year longitudinal ...study (N = 77 children). First, goal encoding at the age of 7 months and implicit false belief understanding at 18 months were predictive of children's understanding of an accidental transgressor's moral intentions at the age of 5 years. Second, 24-month-olds' understanding of subjective desires was predictive of children's ability to understand an accidental transgressor's false belief at 5 years. These correlations remained significant when controlling for gender and verbal IQ. These findings support the theory that an early understanding of intentional agency is foundational for moral cognition in childhood.
Children's understanding of status and group norms influence their expectations about social encounters. However, status is multidimensional and children may perceive status stratification (i.e., ...high- and low-status) differently across multiple status dimensions (i.e., wealth and popularity). The current study investigated the effect of status level and norms on children's expectations about intergroup affiliation in wealth and popularity contexts. Participants (
= 165; age range: 5-10 years;
= 7.72 years) were randomly assigned to hear two scenarios where a high- or low-status target affiliated with opposite-status groups based on either wealth or popularity. In one scenario, the group expressed an inclusive norm. In the other scenario, the group expressed an exclusive norm. For each scenario, children made predictions about children's expectations for a target to acquire social resources. Novel findings indicated that children associated wealth status to some extent, but they drew stronger inferences from the wealth dimension than from the popularity dimension. In contrast to previous evidence that children distinguish between high- and low-status groups, we did not find evidence to support this in the context of the current study. In addition, norms of exclusion diminished children's expectations for acquiring social resources from wealth and popularity groups but this effect was more pronounced between wealth groups. We found age differences in children's expectations in regards to norms, but not in regards to status. The implications of how these effects, in addition to lack of effects, bear on children's expectations about acquiring resources are discussed.
Distinguishing between equity and equality is essential when making social and moral decisions, yet the related neurodevelopmental processes are unknown. Evaluations of contextually based third-party ...distributions incorporating recipient need and resource importance were examined in children and adolescents (N = 82; 8-16 years). Spatiotemporal neurodynamic responses show distinct developmental profiles to viewing such distributions. Event-related potentials (ERPs) differentially predicted real-life behaviors based on age, where older children's (8-10 years) evaluations were related to a fairly rapid, automatic ERP component (early posterior negativity), whereas adolescent and preadolescent (11-16 years) evaluations, first-person allocations, and prosocial behaviors were predicted by later, cognitively controlled ERP components (P3 and late positive potential). Together, these results reveal age-related changes regarding the neural responses that correspond to distributive justice decisions.
Little is known about how group bias may impact children's acceptance of unsubstantiated claims. Most children view cheating as unfair. However, in competitive situations, when ambiguity surrounds ...the potential intention to cheat, group affiliation may lead children to support claims of cheating based solely on the team affiliation of the claimant, even when those claims are not clearly substantiated. Therefore, it may be particularly important to consider the role ingroup bias may play in children's accusations of cheating in a competitive intergroup context. The current study investigated 4–10 year old children's (N = 137, MAge = 6.71 years, SDAge = 1.49; 47 % female) evaluations of ambiguous acts and unverified claims about those acts in a competitive, intergroup context. Results showed that children initially viewed an ambiguous act similarly, regardless of team affiliation, but demonstrated increasing ingroup biases after claims of wrongdoing were introduced. Implications for how unsubstantiated claims may impact intergroup interactions more broadly will be discussed.
Children's decisions regarding the allocation of societal resources in the context of preexisting inequalities were investigated. African American and European American children ages 5 to 6 years (n ...= 91) and 10 to 11 years (n = 94) judged the acceptability of a medical resource inequality on the basis of race, allocated medical supplies, evaluated different resource allocation strategies, and completed a measure of status awareness based on race. With age, children were increasingly aware of wealth status disparities between African Americans and European Americans, and judged a medical resource inequality between groups more negatively. Further, with age, children rectified the resource inequality over perpetuating it, but only when African American children were disadvantaged. With age, children also referenced rights when reasoning about their judgments concerning the disadvantaged African American group. When European American children were disadvantaged, children did not systematically allocate more resources to one group over another. The results are discussed in terms of social inequalities, disadvantaged status, moral judgments, and intergroup attitudes.
This study investigated how Korean (
N
=
397) and U.S. (
N
=
333) children and adolescents (10 and 13 years of age) evaluated personality (aggression, shyness) and group (gender, nationality) ...characteristics as a basis for peer rejection in three contexts (friendship rejection, group exclusion, victimization). Overall, peer rejection based on
group membership was viewed as more unfair than peer rejection based on
personality traits. Children viewed friendship rejection as more legitimate than group exclusion or victimization and used more personal choice reasoning for friendship rejection than for rejection in any other context. Although there were a few cultural differences, overall, the findings provided support for the cultural generalizability of social reasoning about peer rejection.
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