A developmental examination of inequity aversion in 4-year-olds

Prior work has shown that by 4 years of age, children tested with economic games tend to reject offered numerical distributions that are less than those offered to a social partner. In one such game, the Inequity Game, children are asked to make decisions as to whether to accept or reject distributions proposed to them and their social partner. However, researchers usually present children with only one type of disadvantageous, equal, and/or advantageous distribution, making it unclear whether children would respond similarly if offers and response contingencies varied. To begin to examine the role of varying distributions in a simplified version of the Inequity Game, we presented children with two numerical forms of disadvantageous (0-3; 1-3), equal (1-1; 3-3), and advantageous (3-0; 3-1) distributions while measuring their rejection rates and the time it took for them to respond to each distribution. Validating our simplified procedure, we found that 4-year-olds (N=20) generally took longer to respond to and ultimately reject disadvantageous offers when compared to equal or advantageous offers, though this pattern was stronger for 0-3 than for 1-3 disadvantageous offers. These results contribute to the growing literature on the development of behavioral fairness by showing that while disadvantageous inequity aversion emerges early in development, some numerical distributions elicit stronger evidence for it than others, raising interesting questions for future research about the nature of this aversion and the factors that contribute to it.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Sanchez Hernandez, Fernando

Contributors dc:contributor

• Hyde, Daniel

• Inequity Aversion
• Fairness
• Cognitive Development

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Fernando Sanchez Hernandez

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117848

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F117848