Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94705, USA.
CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2021 Aug;208:105149. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105149. Epub 2021 Apr 13.
Recent work has suggested that principles of fairness that seem like natural laws to the Western mind, such as sharing more of the spoils with those who contributed more, can in fact vary significantly across populations. To build a better understanding of the developmental roots of population differences with respect to fairness, we investigated whether 7-year-old children (N = 432) from three cultural backgrounds-Kenya, China, and Germany-consider friendship and merit in their distribution of resources and how they resolve conflicts between the two. We found that friendship had considerable and consistent influence as a cross-culturally recurrent motivation: children in all three cultures preferentially shared with a friend rather than with a neutral familiar peer. On the other hand, the role of merit in distribution seemed to differ cross-culturally: children in China and Germany, but not in Kenya, selectively distributed resources to individuals who worked more. When we pitted friendship against merit, there was an approximately even split in all three cultures between children who favored the undeserving friend and children who shared with the hard-working neutral individual. These results demonstrate commonalities and variability in fairness perceptions across distinct cultures and speak to the importance of cross-cultural research in understanding the development of the human mind.
最近的研究表明，在西方思维中看似自然法则的公平原则，例如根据贡献程度分配更多的成果，实际上在不同人群中可能存在显著差异。为了更好地理解公平方面的人口差异的发展根源，我们调查了来自三个文化背景（肯尼亚、中国和德国）的 7 岁儿童（N=432）是否会考虑友谊和功绩在资源分配中的作用，以及他们如何解决两者之间的冲突。我们发现，友谊作为一种跨文化反复出现的动机具有相当大的影响：所有三个文化背景的儿童都更愿意与朋友分享，而不是与中立的熟人分享。另一方面，功绩在分配中的作用似乎在跨文化上存在差异：中国和德国的儿童，但肯尼亚的儿童没有，会有选择地将资源分配给更努力工作的人。当我们将友谊与功绩进行比较时，所有三个文化背景中的儿童大约各占一半，他们有的更喜欢不称职的朋友，有的则与努力工作的中立个体分享。这些结果表明，在不同的文化中，公平感知存在共性和变异性，这表明跨文化研究对于理解人类思维的发展非常重要。
