When Do Kids Learn 'Fairness'?
By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Nov. 19, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Everyone is apparently born with the ability to detect unfair treatment, but kids don't naturally sense when someone else is getting a raw deal at their expense, a new globe-spanning study has found.
The researchers contend that it's the culture that kids are raised in that lets them recognize when they're being treated better than another person -- and to act accordingly.
In a series of tasks involving candy, hundreds of young kids from seven countries around the world -- the United States, Canada, India, Mexico, Peru, Senegal and Uganda -- innately grasped the unfairness of being given less candy than another child.
"I think it's evolutionary," said Dr. Matthew Lorber, acting director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who was not involved in the research. "There's something inbred in us for survival, that when we're very young we make sure we stand up for ourselves and are taken care of."
But only older kids from the United States, Canada and Uganda were able to sense unfairness -- and act on it -- when given more candy than another child, the researchers found.
"This suggested to us that this form of unfairness -- that is, a negative reaction to getting more than others -- may be importantly influenced by culture," said study co-author Katherine McAuliffe, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University's Social Cognitive Development Lab in New Haven, Conn.
In the study, published online Nov. 18 in the journal Nature, one child sat across from another and was given control of two handles attached to two trays carrying candies.
Researchers varied the amounts of candies on each tray, McAuliffe said. Sometimes the amounts were equal, sometimes the kids controlling the handle got more candy, and sometimes they got less.
"After the [kids] saw the allocations, they were faced with a choice. They could either accept the allocation, in which case both children got treats, or they could reject the allocation, in which case neither child got treats," she said. "This is important because here the fairness of rejecting inequality both goes against the child's own self-interest and is not really nice to the partner."
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Nov. 19, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Everyone is apparently born with the ability to detect unfair treatment, but kids don't naturally sense when someone else is getting a raw deal at their expense, a new globe-spanning study has found.
The researchers contend that it's the culture that kids are raised in that lets them recognize when they're being treated better than another person -- and to act accordingly.
In a series of tasks involving candy, hundreds of young kids from seven countries around the world -- the United States, Canada, India, Mexico, Peru, Senegal and Uganda -- innately grasped the unfairness of being given less candy than another child.
"I think it's evolutionary," said Dr. Matthew Lorber, acting director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who was not involved in the research. "There's something inbred in us for survival, that when we're very young we make sure we stand up for ourselves and are taken care of."
But only older kids from the United States, Canada and Uganda were able to sense unfairness -- and act on it -- when given more candy than another child, the researchers found.
"This suggested to us that this form of unfairness -- that is, a negative reaction to getting more than others -- may be importantly influenced by culture," said study co-author Katherine McAuliffe, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University's Social Cognitive Development Lab in New Haven, Conn.
In the study, published online Nov. 18 in the journal Nature, one child sat across from another and was given control of two handles attached to two trays carrying candies.
Researchers varied the amounts of candies on each tray, McAuliffe said. Sometimes the amounts were equal, sometimes the kids controlling the handle got more candy, and sometimes they got less.
"After the [kids] saw the allocations, they were faced with a choice. They could either accept the allocation, in which case both children got treats, or they could reject the allocation, in which case neither child got treats," she said. "This is important because here the fairness of rejecting inequality both goes against the child's own self-interest and is not really nice to the partner."