Young children think that teachers who count out rewards are fairer that those who don ’t

By Matthew Warren In just the first few years of life, children develop a strong sense of fairness. At 16 months old, toddlers will reward someone who has fairly distributed food or toys between two other people, for example. By two, they tend to share toys equally themselves. A new study shows that children’s judgements of fairness also take into account the method by which resources have been allocated. Kids as young as four think that a teacher who has counted out cookies for a reward is fairer than one who gives that exact same reward without counting.  The research, published in Cognition, suggests that when judging fairness, young children are able to consider the motivations of the person distributing resources. Colin Jacobs and colleagues from Yale University conducted a series of studies, all following the same basic methodology. First, children aged four to six were told a story about two puppets who had been asked by their teachers to help clean the classroom. They learned that one of the puppets had worked hard and cleaned a lot, while the other had not worked very hard. The children were then shown videos of two teachers distributing cookies to the puppets as a reward. In the key study, one teacher split the cookies up into two piles by sight before giving them to the puppets, while the other teacher counted them out. In both cases, the hard-working puppet received seven cookies and the lazier puppet received three. But when asked which of the...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Developmental Source Type: blogs