中国科学院行为科学重点实验室知识库

An underlying aspect of the development of fairness is an aversion from unequal outcomes between equally deserving parties, which is robust by middle-childhood, but evident primarily in western cultures. Here, 7-years-old Chinese’s willingness to accept inequity, when it clashes with two culture-specific values of “Thrift” and “Interdependence”, was examined. In studies 1 & 2 (N=60; 3^rd-party context), children were more willing to accept inequity only when the alternative requires them to waste resources or to ignore social-relationships. In Study 3 (N=84; 1^st-person), waste-aversion was found to be even stronger than disadvantageous and advantageous inequity aversions. These findings broaden the conceptual accounts regarding the development of children’s inequity aversion across-cultures, emphasizing the impact of culture-specific object-related (i.e., waste) and social-related considerations.