Implicit Inequity Aversion in Children and Adults

Abstract

Fairness is a central concern of societies and a core component of the moral domain. Previous research reveals young children will reject disadvantageous allocations (e.g. when they receive fewer candies than a peer), but older children and adults will also reject advantageous inequity. However, it is unknown what drives this change in behavior across development. One possibility is that adults and older children develop a deeply internalized preference for equality; this explains why they make costly choices in economic games that reduce inequality (Internalization hypothesis). An alternative possibility is adults and older children prefer a relative advantage as much as younger children, but increasingly override this preference to adhere to learned norms of equality (Inhibition hypothesis). In Chapter 2, I developed an age-appropriate Fairness Implicit Association Test (FIAT) for children and adults, and investigate the developmental trajectory of implicit preferences for fairness. Results reveal children and adults have implicit preferences for fairness in when it is contrasted against disadvantageous inequity, but not when it is contrasted against advantageous inequity. In Chapter 3, I rule out the possibility that these implicit preferences could be explained by idiosyncrasies of the stimuli instead of participants representing preferences for fairness. Specifically, in a control IAT that uses the same visual stimuli as the FIAT as in Chapter 2, but does not represent valuable rewards, children and adults do not show the same pattern as in Chapter 2. In Chapter 4, I investigate whether preferences for fairness over inequality persist in a strong test: when the payout to the self remains constant. Children and adults again reveal a preference for fairness over disadvantageous but not advantageous inequality, even when the payout to the self is constant, and depend on the relative payouts between the self and peer. Taken together, the current work suggests children’s increasing fair decisions in behavioral tasks with development does not represent a gradual move towards internalization of fairness norms, refuting the Internalization hypothesis. This suggests behavior rejecting advantageous inequity in favor of equality is in opposition to adults’ and children’s implicit preferences, supporting the Inhibition hypothesis.