Lee Kristy Jia Jin, Esposito Gianluca, Setoh Peipei
Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Trento, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2018 Sep 19;9:1752. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01752. eCollection 2018.
The present study examined how 2- to 4-year-old preschoolers in Singapore ( = 202) balance fairness and ingroup loyalty in resource distribution. Specifically, we investigated whether children would enact fair distributions as defined by an equality rule, or show partiality toward their ingroup when distributing resources, and the conditions under which one distributive strategy may take precedence over the other. In Experiment 1, children distributed four different pairs of toys between two puppets. In the Group condition, one puppet was assigned to the same group as the child while the other puppet was assigned to a different group using colored stickers in the No Group condition, no group assignments were made. Children's distributions were assessed for whether the toys were fairly (equally) distributed or unfairly (unequally) distributed in favor of either puppet. Experiment 2 was identical to the Group condition in Experiment 1, except that a third identical toy was introduced following the distribution of each toy pair. Distributions were separately assessed for whether the first two toys were fairly (equally) distributed or unfairly (unequally) distributed in favor of either puppet, and whether children distributed the third toy to the ingroup or outgroup puppet. Overall, the vast majority of children abided by an equality rule when resources were precisely enough to be shared between recipients, but distributed favorably to the ingroup member when there was limited resource availability. We found that fairness trumped ingroup loyalty except in resource distribution involving limited resources. Our results are consistent with findings from other resource distribution studies with preschoolers and similar studies measuring young infants' expectations of distributive behaviors in third-party observations. Taken together, there is evidence suggesting stability in the development of knowledge to behavior in the subdomains of fairness and ingroup loyalty.
本研究考察了新加坡2至4岁的学龄前儿童（ = 202）在资源分配中如何平衡公平与群体内忠诚。具体而言，我们调查了儿童在分配资源时是会按照平等规则进行公平分配，还是会偏袒自己的群体内成员，以及在何种情况下一种分配策略可能会优先于另一种。在实验1中，儿童在两个木偶之间分配四对不同的玩具。在“有群体”条件下，一个木偶被分配到与儿童同一组，而另一个木偶通过彩色贴纸被分配到不同组；在“无群体”条件下，不进行群体分配。评估儿童的分配情况，看玩具是被公平（平等）分配还是不公平（不平等）分配，且偏向于某一个木偶。实验2与实验1中的“有群体”条件相同，只是在每对玩具分配后引入了第三个相同的玩具。分别评估前两个玩具是被公平（平等）分配还是不公平（不平等）分配且偏向于某一个木偶，以及儿童是否将第三个玩具分配给群体内或群体外的木偶。总体而言，当资源足够精确到可以在接受者之间共享时，绝大多数儿童遵守平等规则，但在资源有限时，会将资源分配给群体内成员。我们发现，除了在涉及有限资源的资源分配中，公平胜过群体内忠诚。我们的结果与其他针对学龄前儿童的资源分配研究以及在第三方观察中测量幼儿对分配行为期望的类似研究结果一致。综合来看，有证据表明在公平和群体内忠诚子领域中，从知识到行为的发展具有稳定性。
