Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8205, USA; Department of Developmental Psychology, Georg-Elias Müller Institute of Psychology, University of Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA; Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2019 Jun;23(6):454-463. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.03.001. Epub 2019 Apr 2.
One influential view holds that children's sense of fairness emerges at age 8 and is rooted in the development of an aversion to unequal resource distributions. Here, we suggest two amendments to this view. First, we argue and present evidence that children's sense of fairness emerges already at age 3 in (and only in) the context of collaborative activities. This is because, in our theoretical view, collaboration creates a sense of equal respect among partners. Second, we argue and present evidence that children's judgments about what is fair are essentially judgments about the social meaning of the distributive act; for example, children accept unequal distributions if the procedure gave everyone an equal chance (so-called distributive justice). Children thus respond to unequal (and other) distributions not based on material concerns, but rather based on interpersonal concerns: they want equal respect.
一种有影响力的观点认为，儿童的公平感在 8 岁时出现，并植根于对不平等资源分配的厌恶。在这里，我们对这一观点提出两点修正。首先，我们认为并提出证据表明，儿童的公平感早在 3 岁时就已经在（且仅在）合作活动中出现。这是因为，在我们的理论观点中，合作在合作伙伴之间创造了一种平等尊重的感觉。其次，我们认为并提出证据表明，儿童对公平的判断本质上是对分配行为的社会意义的判断；例如，如果程序给每个人同等的机会（所谓的分配正义），儿童就会接受不平等的分配。因此，儿童对不平等（和其他）分配的反应不是基于物质上的考虑，而是基于人际关系的考虑：他们希望得到平等的尊重。
