The development of distributive justice: The roles of children\u27s understanding of the mind, parents, and temperament

To study the basis for children\u27s concern for distributive justice, the investigator examined whether children\u27s understanding of the mind, parents\u27 beliefs about fairness, and children\u27s temperament influence preschoolers\u27 distributive justice behavior. One hundred 3- to 5-year-olds participated in the study. Four reward-for-work allocation tasks were presented randomly to the children and they were instructed to distribute stickers between themselves and a fictitious character. In every task, an equality option was pitted against one of two types of unequal self-interest allocations. The study demonstrated that preschoolers did not always choose an outcome that maximized their gains when they were instructed to distribute resources in a reward-for-work allocation task. Instead of their acquisition of a representational theory of the mind, children\u27s expectation of affective consequences of their allocation behavior was the significant predictor of their selection of equal outcome choice. Furthermore, individual differences were found in children\u27s preferences of distributive justice rules. Children\u27s temperament influenced their allocation behavior only when their mothers had low egalitarian value orientation. The findings revealed that preschool children differ in their degree of concern for distributive justice