How do children from different countries make decisions about dividing resources?

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Are young children sensitive to the concept of equality?

Will they try to maintain equality even at the cost of “wasting” resources?

And does it matter how valuable the resource is?

 

Children ages 6–8 from three countries- Israel, the United States, and China- participated in the study. All the children were asked to decide what to do in the following scenario:

“Two children, Michael and Dan, did a very good job cleaning their room today. We would like to give them five erasers as a reward. You need to decide how many erasers Michael and Dan will receive. We have five erasers. We have one for Dan, one for Michael… one for Dan, one for Michael. Oh no! We have one eraser left. What do you think we should do with it? Should we give the eraser to Dan, or throw it away?”

 

The study found that:

 

• Children preferred to discard a resource (an eraser) in order to maintain equality.

• Children understand the importance of fairness at a relatively early stage of development.

 

The researchers wondered whether children would respond differently to resources of varying value. They therefore created additional versions of the experiment, featuring both “low-value” rewards- such as candies or erasers- and “high-value” rewards, such as money.

 

This time, the researchers found that while most children preferred an equal distribution when the reward was relatively low in value (such as erasers), they were less likely to insist on strict equality when the rewards were more valuable. As the value increased, children were more willing to distribute the resources unequally in order to avoid waste.

 

​The Israeli children showed a pattern similar to that of the American children. In contrast, the Chinese children wasted fewer resources (even when the items were “low-value”), and demonstrated a stronger preference for equality when the rewards were of lower value.