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Social influences on inequity aversion in children.

ABSTRACT: Adults and children are willing to sacrifice personal gain to avoid both disadvantageous and advantageous inequity. These two forms of inequity aversion follow different developmental trajectories, with disadvantageous inequity aversion emerging around 4 years and advantageous inequity aversion emerging around 8 years. Although inequity aversion is assumed to be specific to situations where resources are distributed among individuals, the role of social context has not been tested in children. Here, we investigated the influence of two aspects of social context on inequity aversion in 4- to 9-year-old children: (1) the role of the experimenter distributing rewards and (2) the presence of a peer with whom rewards could be shared. Experiment 1 showed that children rejected inequity at the same rate, regardless of whether the experimenter had control over reward allocations. This indicates that children's decisions are based upon reward allocations between themselves and a peer and are not attempts to elicit more favorable distributions from the experimenter. Experiment 2 compared rejections of unequal reward allocations in children interacting with or without a peer partner. When faced with a disadvantageous distribution, children frequently rejected a smaller reward when a larger reward was visible, even if no partner would obtain the larger reward. This suggests that nonsocial factors partly explain disadvantageous inequity rejections. However, rejections of disadvantageous distributions were higher when the larger amount would go to a peer, indicating that social context enhances disadvantageous inequity aversion. By contrast, children rejected advantageous distributions almost exclusively in the social context. Therefore, advantageous inequity aversion appears to be genuinely social, highlighting its potential relevance for the development of fairness concerns. By comparing social and nonsocial factors, this study provides a detailed picture of the expression of inequity aversion in human ontogeny and raises questions about the function and evolution of inequity aversion in humans.

SUBMITTER: McAuliffe K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3846671 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Social influences on inequity aversion in children.

McAuliffe Katherine K Blake Peter R PR Kim Grace G Wrangham Richard W RW Warneken Felix F

PloS one 20131202 12

Adults and children are willing to sacrifice personal gain to avoid both disadvantageous and advantageous inequity. These two forms of inequity aversion follow different developmental trajectories, with disadvantageous inequity aversion emerging around 4 years and advantageous inequity aversion emerging around 8 years. Although inequity aversion is assumed to be specific to situations where resources are distributed among individuals, the role of social context has not been tested in children. H ...[more]

PMID: 24312509

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Project description:Previous studies have shown that people would like to sacrifice benefits to themselves in order to avoid inequitable outcomes, not only when they receive less than others (disadvantageous inequity aversion) but also when they receive more (advantageous inequity aversion). This feature is captured by the theory of inequity aversion. The present study was inspired by what appears to be asymmetry in the research paradigm toward advantageous inequity aversion. Specifically, studies that supported the existence of advantageous inequity aversion always relied on the paradigm in which participants can determine allocations. Thus, it is interesting to know what would occur if participants could not determine allocations or simply passed judgment on predetermined allocations. To address this, a behavioral experiment (N = 118) and a skin conductance response (SCR) experiment (N = 29) were adopted to compare participants' preferences for advantageous inequity directly when allocations were determined and when allocations were predetermined in an allocating task. In the determined condition, participants could divide by themselves a sum of money between themselves and a matched person, whereas in the predetermined condition, they could simply indicate their satisfaction with an equivalent program-generated allocation. It was found that, compared with those in the determined condition, participants in the predetermined condition behaved as if they liked the advantageous inequity and equity to the same degree (Experiment One) and that the SCRs elicited by advantageous inequity had no differences from those elicited by equity, suggesting that participants did not feel negatively toward advantageous inequity in this situation (Experiment Two). The present study provided mutual corroboration (behavioral and electrophysiological data) to document that advantageous inequity aversion may differ as a function of the individual's role in determining allocations, and it would disappear if individual cannot determine allocations.

Dataset Information

Social influences on inequity aversion in children.

Publications

Social influences on inequity aversion in children.

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