Collaboration increases children's normative concern for fairness.

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Behavioral Economics

Background:

• Collaboration is known to foster equity in young children.
• It remains unclear if this early equity is a normative concern or interpersonal.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the role of collaborative versus individual resource acquisition on children's fairness interventions.
• To determine if children's fairness concerns are normative or context-dependent.

Main Methods:

• 104 children (ages 3-7) from rural Canada participated.
• A third-party intervention game assessed responses to inequitable sharing.
• Resource acquisition was either collaborative or individual.

Main Results:

• Children intervened more frequently against inequity when resources were earned collaboratively.
• This effect was observed at an earlier age compared to individually earned resources.
• Justifications for decisions cited equity or fairness similarly across conditions.

Conclusions:

• Collaboration plays a foundational role in the development of fairness.
• Children's concern for fairness, particularly in response to inequity, is normative.