Rectifying inequities in resource collection in young children

Numerous studies have documented children's understanding of fairness through their ability to rectify inequities when distributing resources to others. Understanding fairness, however, involves more than just applying norms of equity when distributing resources. Children must also navigate situations in which resources are collected from them for a common good. The developmental origins and the trajectory of equitable resource collection are understudied in the literature on children's prosocial behavior. Experiment 1 presented 4- to 8-year-olds (N = 130) with characters who started with different amounts of resources that were available for both personal use and a group project in school. Participants were asked how a teacher should fairly collect resources from the two characters, contrasting the teacher taking the same amount of resources from each individual (preserving the inequity) or leaving each individual with the same amount of resources (rectifying the inequity). Four- and 5-year-olds responded randomly; 6- to 8-year-olds preferred to rectify the inequity. Experiment 2 reproduced this finding on a new group of 5- to 7-year-olds (N = 69), eliciting justifications for their choice. Justifications in terms of fairness related to equitable choices. Experiment 3 reproduced this finding again in a new group of 5- to 7-year-olds (N = 77), contrasting children's preference for equitable resource collection with that of resource distribution. Children were more likely to rectify an inequity when collecting resources than when distributing resources to individuals who started with an inequity. This difference was driven more by the younger children in the sample. We discuss potential mechanisms for these findings in terms of children's developing concepts of fairness. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Across three experiments, children developed preferences for equitable collection of resources by age 6. Preferences for equitable resource collection were more likely to be justified by appealing to concepts of fairness. Although preferences for equitable resource collection emerged slightly before equitable resource distribution, these data suggest children develop a unified mechanism for prosocial resource allocation.