Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford, Oxford, England.
Dev Psychol. 2012 Mar;48(2):492-8. doi: 10.1037/a0026598. Epub 2011 Dec 12.
Classic studies in developmental psychology demonstrate a relatively late development of equity, with children as old as 6 or even 8-10 years failing to follow the logic of merit--that is, giving more to those who contributed more. Following Piaget (1932), these studies have been taken to indicate that judgments of justice develop slowly and follow a stagelike progression, starting off with simple rules (e.g., equality: everyone receives the same) and only later on in development evolving into more complex ones (e.g., equity: distributions match contributions). Here, we report 2 experiments with 3- and 4-year-old children (N = 195) that contradict this constructivist account. Our results demonstrate that children as young as 3 years old are able to take merit into account by distributing tokens according to individual contributions but that this ability may be hidden by a preference for equality.
经典的发展心理学研究表明，公平感的发展相对较晚，有些 6 岁甚至 8-10 岁的儿童无法遵循贡献原则，即根据个人的贡献给予更多奖励。受皮亚杰（1932）的影响，这些研究表明，正义判断的发展较为缓慢，遵循阶段性发展，首先是简单的规则（例如平等：每个人都得到相同的奖励），然后在发展过程中逐渐发展为更复杂的规则（例如公平：分配与贡献相匹配）。在这里，我们报告了两项涉及 3 岁和 4 岁儿童（N=195）的实验，这些实验与这种建构主义解释相矛盾。我们的研究结果表明，年仅 3 岁的儿童就能够根据个人贡献分配代币，考虑到贡献因素，但这种能力可能会被平等偏好所掩盖。
