From Knowledge To Behavior:Affecting Factors And Early Development Of Equity Principle For 3-to 5-year-old Children

Distributive Justice concerns how individuals and societies distribute benefits and burdens in a just or moral manner.Equity principle concerns how individuals follow the logic of merit by distributing benefits and resources according to individual contribution.Classic constructivist position of distributive justice demonstrate children’s understanding of distributive justice emerged slowly,and follow a stage-like progression from irrelevant rules(such as giving according to one’s own desire)to simple rules(such as equality:everyone get the same)to more complex ones later on in development(such as equity:distributions match contributions),with children as old as 6 doesn’t have the conceptual knowledge of equity and failing to follow the logic of merit when their own resources are at stake.Recently,an alternative to the constructivist position of distributive justice late development has emerged.Researchers propose a general argument of early development of equity from the point of evolutionary biology.Some new research with infants and preschoolers supported this view.However,it is important to note that this work has been carried out mainly in Western preschoolers.It is therefore possible that Western individualism cultural norms have an important impact on the development of equity.If equity has genetic and evolutionary origins,it should be not be affected by specific culture norms and exist universally in children brought up in different culture norms.Regretfully,so far,research examined early development of equity principle with Oriental cultural background preschoolers,especially with Chinese preschoolers is quite a few,and lack of evidence before 4-year-old.Meanwhile,the phenomenon of gap between children’s conceptual knowledge and behavior of equity principle has rarely been explored in the same study.Furthermore,similar studies with preschoolers produced inconsistency results.Based on suchresearch background,in present study we explore early development,alignment or gap,plausible explanation,and affecting factors from 2 different aspects,that is children’s knowledge of equity principle and their behavior when their own resources are at stake.Both provide positive support for the early development of equity view from different culture background and provide a scientific basis for the practice of early fairness education.This thesis mainly follows two phases on considering the above issues:In study 1 third-person uninvolved context,we used hypothetical scenarios task(experiment la,n=120 and experiment 1b,n=50)and resource allocation task(experiment2,n=179),define merit qualitative and quantitative respectively,and examine 3-to 5-year-old children’s knowledge of equity resource allocation and affecting factors.The result indicated:(1)3-to 5-year-old childrenare able to take merit into account by distributing resources according to individual contributions,gave the big resource(experiment la)or more resources(experiment 2)to the one who contributed more;(2)resources condition(can be divided or not)affect 3-to 5-year-oldchildren’s resource allocation decision,only when the resources cannot be divided in two recipients,3-to 5-year-old children would have a preference for the one who contributed more,Children showed a tendency toward equal distribution when the resources can be divided equally among the two potential recipients(experiment 1b).(3)Task complexity has influence on 3-to 5-year-old children’s proportional equity decision,in task simplicity condition,but not in task complexity condition,3-to 5-year-old children’s modal response was proportional equity(experiment 2).In study 2 first-person involved context,use classic resource allocation task(experiment 3,n=95and experiment 4,n=12)and 3 modified economic game----pro-social game,envy game and sharing game(experiment 5,n=68),examined whether 3-to 5-year-old children are able to use equity principle to share resources with others when they are potential recipients of the rewards,merit sensitivity and early development of social comparison.We expected to make inference on the gap between equity knowledge and behavior.The result indicated:(1)3-to 5-year-old childrencannot follow the principle of equity,tend to keep significantly more than half of the resources for themselves,exhibited self-serving bias(experiments).(2)3-and 5-year-old childrencan take merit into account by distributing resources equality(experiment 4).(3)5-year-old but not 3-to 4-year-old children show merit sensitivity,on average,significantly keep less stickers for themselves in the inferior work condition than in the superior work condition(experiments)or control condition(experiment 5).(4)When partner is absence,5but not 4-year-old children has clear conscious of social comparison(experiment 5).Based on above empirical results,we try to make a summarize and inference on early development of 3-to 5-year-old children’s equity knowledge and behavior,affecting factors,phenomenon of knowledge-behavior gap and reasons:(1)3-to 5-year-old children has knowledge of equity principle,are able to take merit into account by distributing resources according individual contributions consistently.(2)This ability may be hidden by a preference for equality.At the same time,task complexity has impact on 3-to 5-year-old children’s proportional equity.(3)There is a gap between equity knowledge and behavior in 3-to 5-year-old children when work-condition unequal.(4)5-but not 4-year-old children has merit sensitivity in first-person involved context.(5)Self-interest alone can explain 3-to 4-year-old children’s knowledge-behavior gap,but for 5-year-old children,this gap may be influenced both by self-interest and social comparison.(6)Equal pay for equal work as a special form of equity principle,may have the different origin and development process with more pay for more work and less pay for less work.