Preschoolers’ Distributive Justice When They Distribute Few Total Rewards in a Third-Party Task

Abstract

Five-year-old children were presented with a story in which one character made three origami stars and another made nine. Then the participants were asked to distribute small rewards to each character (“Three” or “Four” candies), and were told to use all the candies (“All” instruction), or that “You can leave some candies, if you don't want to use all the candies (‘Partial’ instruction).” In Study 1, almost all children distributed the candies equally (Four). Some participants (28.1%) refused the All instruction for Three, and then equally distributed the candies. They conducted equality allocations in three or all four of the conditions, giving a ratio for “Thorough Egalitarians” of 20–30%. Study 2 used looking-time measures to assess participants’ judgment. Children looked longer at the amounts of production of two characters in condition Three than in condition Four. Allocation patterns were almost identical to Study 1, but the condition “Partial-Three” results were not reproduced. The paper discusses the types of egalitarian behavior and the associated production and reward quantities observed.