Developmental Research On Distributive Justice Behavior Of Children Aged 5-8 Years: The Impact Of Merit And Peer Relationship

The fair behavior of distribution originated from the exploration of fair morality.The development model of social reasoning holds that moral motivation and social motivation are important influencing factors of children’s social decision-making,and moral motivation such as equality and merit are closely related to the fairness of distribution,while social motivation such as group relationship and group norms are closely related to group relationship,and children weigh these two motivations at the same time to realize social decision-making.The two motivations most closely associated with children are merit and peer relations.The merit principle is one of the three principles of distributive justice behavior,and children are often confronted with situations in which the merit principle corresponds to a work-based distribution as they grow up.Peer relationships are among the strongest social relationships children have from early childhood to adulthood.However,previous studies have not yielded consistent results on how children weigh merit and peer relationship conflicts during their growth and development,and this study will focus on the effects of different merits and peer relationships on distributive justice behavior of children aged 5-8 years and their developmental changes with age.This study selected 146 children aged 5-8 from three kindergartens and primary schools as the research subjects,and used a 3(merit: 1:3,2:2,3:1)× 3(peer relationship: liked individuals,disliked individuals,strangers)× 4(age: 5 to 8 years old)mixed experimental design to explore how children’s distributive justice behavior changes with age when facing both contribution and peer relationships simultaneously.The results showed that:(1)children’s allocation behavior based on peer relationship decreases with age,giving less resources to individuals with positive peer relationships and more resources to individuals with negative peer relationships;(2)Children’s distributive justice behavior based on merit increases with age,giving less resources to recipients with less merit and more resources to recipients with more merit;(3)Compared with the peer relationship strategy,children tend to use equal and merit strategies more frequently.The conclusion is that children’s distributive justice behavior is influenced by both merit and peer relationships,with peer relationships influence decreasing and merit influence increasing as children get older.Children are more likely to explain their distributive justice behavior using equality and contribution strategies.