Evans I M, Galyer K T, Smith K J
Department of Psychology, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.
J Genet Psychol. 2001 Jun;162(2):212-27. doi: 10.1080/00221320109597962.
Being able to judge the fairness of a personal encounter and having an appreciation of the associated feelings are important components of prosocial development. This study explored a common feature of everyday experience: unfair reward and unfair punishment. Scenarios depicting 4 possible variants of unfairness were read to children aged 9 to 11 years, who then made judgments regarding the degree of unfairness and the nature and strength of the feelings experienced by the characters. Our hypothesis that children with classroom conduct problems would judge the non-receipt of a deserved reward as worse than the receipt of an undeserved punishment was not confirmed. This differentiation, however, did prove to be characteristic of boys in general, but not girls. Being asked to think of unfair things that had actually happened did not appear to influence the children's responses to hypothetical unfair situations, but did reveal that children experience and remember a variety of unfair events in everyday family contexts. This study provides evidence that children actively monitor the receipt of social reward and punishment according to their perception of fairness.
能够判断人际互动中的公平性并体会相关感受是亲社会发展的重要组成部分。本研究探讨了日常经历中的一个常见特征：不公平的奖励和不公平的惩罚。向9至11岁的儿童朗读了描绘4种可能的不公平变体的情景，然后让他们对不公平程度以及情景中人物所体验到的感受的性质和强度做出判断。我们的假设是，有课堂行为问题的儿童会认为未得到应得的奖励比得到不应得的惩罚更糟糕，但这一假设未得到证实。然而，这种差异确实被证明是一般男孩而非女孩的特征。被要求思考实际发生的不公平事件似乎并未影响儿童对假设的不公平情景的反应，但确实表明儿童在日常家庭环境中经历并记住了各种不公平事件。这项研究提供了证据，表明儿童会根据他们对公平性的认知积极监测社会奖励和惩罚的获得情况。
