Development of Children's Procedural Fairness and Its Internal Mechanisms

Xu Xiaohui; Xu Min; Zhang Yaohua; Zhang Minghao

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240408

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2024, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (4) : 829-837. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240408

Developmental & Educational Psychology

Development of Children's Procedural Fairness and Its Internal Mechanisms

Xu Xiaohui, Xu Min, Zhang Yaohua, Zhang Minghao

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Abstract

In the past decades, researchers payed primary attention to distributive fairness, and they found that children prefer distributive fairness. However, it is unknown that whether children also prefer procedural fairness. Procedural fairness refers to whether the methods, mechanisms, and processes that determine the outcome are fair. Researchers often ask children to use "procedures" to allocate resources, such as spinning a wheel, tossing a coin, rolling a die, rotating an order, etc. These fair procedures share two important characteristics: randomness of outcome and equality of opportunity. Research has found that infants already possess sensitivity of procedural fairness, and children aged 3 to 5 were able to accurately judge whether an allocation procedure is fair and would protest against unfair procedures. As they grow, children demonstrate more mature procedural fairness behavior. However, children are not always able to follow procedural fairness norms to guide their distributive behavior, which refers to cognition-behavior gap. That is, the development of children's procedural behavior lags behind their perception of procedural fairness. For example, it has been found that children aged 4 to 6 prefer unfair procedures that are favorable to themselves. It is not until around 8 years old that children can reject unfair procedures in their favor.
Impartiality Account of Fairness and Fairness as Equal Respect have usually been used to explain the development characteristics of children's procedural fairness. The former theory suggests that fairness functions to signal the fair individual's impartiality to others, aimed to build a good reputation for the divider. It has been found that, as children grow, they become increasingly concerned whether they are impartial and try to build a reputation for pro-sociality within their peer group. For example, children aged 7 to 9 are more likely to allocate resources by flipping a coin than those aged 4 to 6 because they are worried about their reputation being damaged. Impartiality has two forms: first, when children were distributors, they would create inequality that disadvantaged to themselves rather than to peers. Second, children would fairly treat all the members in a distribution in order to avoid partiality to someone. The latter theory emphasizes that children's sense of fairness is rooted in their need for equal respect. The “respect” can be interpreted in two aspects. One means that children have an opportunity to voice on their behalf, and the other means that children are not just concerned about the material rewards, they are concerned about the social meaning of the distributive action. It has been found that as children grow older, they become increasingly sensitive to respect, especially when they are treated unfairly. Compared to Impartiality Account of Fairness, Fairness as Equal Respect is more inclusive. In procedural fairness, equal respect is the core, while impartiality is the extrinsic manifestation.
Future research can start from three aspects. First, to reveal the developmental trajectory of children's procedural fairness and elucidate the dynamic interactive developmental process between children's procedural fairness perceptions and interfering factors, such as selfish motives, social comparison, group identity and social economic status etc. Second, to enhance the theoretical and practical explorations of the synchronicity between the development of children's procedural fairness perceptions and procedural fairness behavior, and to further explore the role of collaborative activities in bridging the cognition-behavior gap. Last but not least, future studies could design triadic interaction contexts to examine the decision-making patterns of the intermediate-positioned individuals. For example, whether they punish the one who gained more and compensate the one who gained less or do nothing. This may help to validate the relative correctness of the theory of Impartiality Account of Fairness and Fairness as Equal Respect.

Key words

procedural fairness / distributive fairness / impartiality account of fairness / fairness as equal respect / children

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Xu Xiaohui, Xu Min, Zhang Yaohua, Zhang Minghao. Development of Children's Procedural Fairness and Its Internal Mechanisms[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2024, 47(4): 829-837 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240408

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