About this paper symposium

---

Panel information
Panel 20. Social Cognition

Paper #1
Egalitarian procedures are not always fair: The development of preferences for selective procedures
Author information	Role
Montana Shore, Boston University, United States	Presenting author
Peter Blake, Boston University, US	Non-presenting author
Abstract
Research on the development of fairness has primarily focused on the distribution of resources as opposed to the procedures used to justify distributions. However, procedural fairness is a critical factor in people’s fairness evaluations, particularly when resources are scarce and equal distributions are not possible (Lind & Tyler, 2013). In these cases, as in the recent pandemic, adults tend to view egalitarian procedures as unfair and view certain selective procedures as more appropriate (Buckwalter & Peterson, 2020; Daugherty-Biddison et al., 2018). In contrast, children seem to prefer egalitarian procedures over other options (Shaw & Olson, 2014; Stowe et al., 2022), and it is unknown how this preference changes with age. In two pre-registered studies, we examined whether 5- to 8-year-old children prefer some selective procedures over an egalitarian procedure. Children saw two lands using different procedures to allocate a scarce resource: one used a selective procedure and the other used an egalitarian procedure (a 50/50 spinner). In both studies, we used Favoritism as one selective procedure as existing research shows children generally dislike favoritism compared to egalitarian procedures (Shaw & Olson, 2014). In Study 1 (N = 64, 5-8 year olds), we also used Need as a selective procedure. Study 2 (n = 42, data collection ongoing, 5-8 year olds) used selective procedures drawn from the medical ethics literature (Order of Arrival, Maximizing Length of Benefit). After they heard about the procedures in each land, children chose their preferred procedure and rated the permissibility of each possible procedure using a 4-point Likert scale (Really okay - Really not okay). Across both studies, we predicted that children would prefer the egalitarian procedure over the favoritism procedure. In Study 1, we predicted that with age, children would prefer the need procedure over the egalitarian procedure. For Study 2, we predicted that with age, children would prefer the maximizing length of benefit procedure over the egalitarian procedure, and had no specific predictions for order of arrival. We expected children’s permissibility judgments would mirror their preferences. In Study 1, we found that with age, children were more likely to choose the Need procedure over the egalitarian procedure and egalitarian over Favoritism as expected (B = 0.07, p = 0.03, Figure 1). For the permissibility ratings, compared to the egalitarian option, Need became more permissible (B = 0.03, p = 0.03) and Favoritism became less permissible (B = -0.04, p = 0.003) with age (Figure 2). Preliminary results from Study 2 replicate the favoritism findings from Study 1. For the other selective procedures, 62% of children (n = 26) preferred egalitarian over Order of Arrival, but children were split on Maximizing Benefits (52% , n = 22). In sum, the results thus far show that children begin to differentiate between selective and egalitarian procedures between 5 and 8 years of age. Importantly, with age, the egalitarian option is often rejected in favor of certain selective procedures. These changes indicate a more sophisticated understanding of procedural fairness than previously known.

Paper #2
Implicit Fairness Biases in Children and Adults
Author information	Role
Dr. Felix Warneken, Ph.D., University of Michigan, United States	Presenting author
Monica Burns, Harvard University, US	Non-presenting author
Rose Wang, University of Michigan, US	Non-presenting author
Abstract
Fairness behaviors are characterized by a developmental shift from selfish to more equitable sharing. However, prior work focused on overt behaviors that can result from explicit attempts to manage social expectations. Here we present a series of studies testing whether children and adults show implicit fairness preferences to examine foundational preferences for equality outside of active behavioral control. We created an Implicit Association Test of egalitarian fairness, with resource allocations mirroring those that have been used to test explicit fairness behaviors (Blake & McAuliffe, 2011). We were particularly interested in testing US children at an age when they go through a radical developmental change in their explicit fairness behaviors by starting to opt for equality even over advantageous allocations of valuable windfall gains. Do children’s implicit preferences show a similar developmental shift, suggesting that the newly developing fairness behaviors reflect a fundamental change in children’s underlying preferences? Or do implicit preferences remain unchanged, suggesting that prior findings about children’s explicit behavioral responses reflect a change towards overriding developmentally stable preferences? We summarize findings from a series of 11 experiments using our implicit association test with over 1500 participants, including children at 5 to 13 years of age as well as adults. The experiments included several internal replications and follow-up experiments to rule out low-level explanations such as visual preferences. As shown in Figure 1, stimuli from the Disadvantageous condition displayed that the participant would receive less than a peer in the unfair allocation, versus equal payoffs in the fair allocation. Conversely, in the Advantageous condition, the participant received more than a peer in the unfair allocation. Another set of target stimuli were positive and negative attributes, displayed as words (e.g. ‘nice’ or ‘yucky’). Participants had to sort these stimuli as quickly and accurately as possible and within-subject differences in reaction time for matching versus mismatching trials (allocation type & word valence) were an index for implicit associations, here coded as pro equality. Our experiments showed that both children and adults have positive implicit associations for equality over disadvantageous inequality, appearing as early as 5 years of age and into adulthood. By contrast, their preferences for equality over advantageous inequality were minor or absent altogether across children and adults. Figure 2 shows the main pattern from one of our experiments. These findings are striking given prior findings that children from the same population change dramatically in their explicit fairness behavior, becoming much more likely to reject advantageous allocations by 8 years of age. This suggests that neither this developmental change in children's overt fairness behavior nor differences in fairness behaviors between children and adults are due to increased implicit preferences for equality. Rather, children and adults have a deep underlying preference for egalitarian fairness when they are at a disadvantage, but not when they are at an advantage relative to others. We discuss potential explanations for these findings, including the hypothesis that older children’s and adults’ preferences for behavioral fairness involves control-processes overriding their underlying psychological preferences.

Paper #3
From ‘Self-sacrifice’ to ‘Fair Leadership’: Children’s Expectations for Leaders in Group Contributions and Reward Allocations
Author information	Role
Siyu Ma, Tsinghua University, China	Presenting author
Ziyan Guo, Tsinghua University, China	Non-presenting author
Zhen Wu, Tsinghua University, China	Non-presenting author
Abstract
To navigate social environments effectively, children must understand social hierarchies, particularly leadership roles. Investigating young children's perceptions of leadership provides insights into how social structures are internalized. Early perceptions and responses to hierarchy may remain intuitive throughout the lifespan, guiding social perceptions, interactions, and attitudes. Across three experiments, this study examined whether children expect leaders to bear more responsibility or entitlement during group contributions and reward allocations, and how these expectations change with age, involving a total of 859 Chinese children (433 girls, grades 1 to 5, Mage = 9.18, SD = 1.61). In the experiments, children were asked to decide how four group members, including themselves, should pay for train tickets and allocate rewards among the members. The group conducted three rounds of payments and allocations, with the total amount of tickets or rewards set at 4 for the first round (allowing equal contribution or reward distribution), and either 3 or 5 randomly presented for the second and third rounds (creating scenarios of unequal contribution or reward allocation). In Experiment 1 (N = 66, grade 1, Mage = 6.67), either the participant or another group member was assigned the role of group leader. Experiment 2 (N = 392, grades 1 to 5, Mage = 9.10) replicated Experiment 1, adding an egalitarian control group condition where none of the four members were designated as leaders. In Experiment 3 (N = 401, grades 1 to 5, Mage = 9.27), children were asked to evaluate, from a third-party perspective, whether the decisions made by groups with a leader and those without were fair. Experiment 1 showed that Chinese 6-year-old children anticipated that leaders would contribute more resources to a joint goal than non-leaders but would not receive more rewards unless extra resources were available and the leader was another child. Contrary to advancing self-interest or equality, children as leaders believed they should contribute more but take fewer rewards than other leaders, suggesting a ‘self-sacrifice’ effect in the expectations of 6-year-old children. Experiment 2 examined age differences in children’s understanding of leadership by assigning roles of leader and non-leader in hierarchical groups and comparing them to a non-hierarchical control group. The ‘self-sacrifice’ effect observed in Experiment 1 decreased with age, indicating that older children adjusted their expectations of leaders and non-leaders to a more balanced and fair level. Additionally, the results indicated that younger children had inconsistent expectations of leaders when they were in leadership roles compared to non-leaders, whereas older children did not show significant differences. Experiment 3 revealed that children from grades 1 to 5 consistently viewed both small and large contributions as unfair. Overall, our research suggests that younger Chinese children tend to perceive leaders as ‘self-sacrificing,’ while older children adopt a more balanced view of leadership, aligning their expectations with social norms of fairness. This shift reflects an increasing ability to reconcile responsibility and entitlement as children develop.

Paper #4
Investigating children’s reward allocations within the context of collaboration
Author information	Role
Selina J. Fu, University of Toronto, Canada	Presenting author
Jessica A. Sommerville, University of Toronto, Canada	Non-presenting author
Abstract
Fair behaviours are key to forming cooperative social relationships. Although even infants expect fairness in third-party resource distributions (Sommerville et al., 2013) evidence suggests that, at baseline, young children have a self-serving bias in windfall resource distributions (Kanngiesser & Warneken, 2012). Critically, while this bias appears to be reduced when children work jointly with a social partner to obtain resources (Corbit, 2019; Corbit et al., 2017), it is not entirely eliminated. Here, we propose that resource distributions that privilege the self following collaboration may occur because children often overestimate their contribution to collaborative activities (Sommerville & Hammond, 2007). To address this question, 32 children (42 months 24 days - 68 months 28 days; MAGE = 51 months 12 days; 18 girls) worked with a social partner to complete a series of six tangram-like collaborative puzzles. During the puzzles, each person alternated turns and placed an equal number of pieces. Children were then asked to distribute stickers based on their respective work efforts during the games: on each trial of the sticker task they were shown a series of paired sticker sheets, that varied in the stickers on each sheet and were asked to choose one sheet for themself and one sheet for their partner. Finally, to gauge perceptions of work contribution during the puzzles, children were asked a series of three questions: who worked harder, who did better, and who did more. Children answered either partner (0), both (1), or self (2) to each question, yielding a total score of 0-6. We predicted that if children overestimated their work effort during the puzzles, their scores would differ from chance (3), and in turn, their sticker allocation would privilege the self. Children’s work effort scores (M = 3.78, SD = 1.34, Mdn = 3.00, V = 108, p = .007) were significantly above chance, indicating that they reported contributing more/better effort than their partner on the collaborative activities. Additionally, the proportion of sticker rewards children allocated to themself (Mself = 0.55, SD = 0.08) was significantly more than what was allocated to their partner (Mpartner = 0.45, SD = 0.08), Mdn = 0.57, V = 382, p = .002. Thus, our findings demonstrate that in situations where children feel as if they did more work, they also give more rewards to themself, suggesting that children’s resource allocations may be biased towards the self even after collaboration due to an overestimation of their work contributions. Future work will seek to ensure that children’s reward allocations are not solely due to an overall selfish bias, but instead stems from their perception of greater contribution. Additionally, we will investigate whether similar patterns are obtained when rewards are the product of joint work effort. Together, this research will elucidate why children’s sharing of resources does not always appear to be fair.

⇦ Back to session