Americans cherish their ideals of fairness. And American children can be especially strident—okay, loud—advocates for equality. Anyone who has ever painstakingly cut and distributed a five-year-old’s birthday cake knows how closely those little eyes watch for injustice.
To examine how a sense of fairness emerges in children, psychologist Peter Blake and his team built a toy they call the “inequity apparatus,” or—less forbiddingly— the Skittle-ator. It’s a two-foot-long wooden plank with two small, raised trays near the center. Two children sit on either side, facing each other, as the scientists place Skittles on the trays. In front of one child are two handles, one red and one green. If the child pulls the green handle, the trays tip toward each child and dump Skittles into bowls where they can keep them. But if the kid pulls the red handle, the Skittles slide into a bowl in the center, where neither child can keep them.
In general, when the scientists offer a young child, around age four or five, a “good deal”—she gets four Skittles and the other child gets one—she pulls the green handle and happily takes the four Skittles. But when the scientists offer a “bad deal”—she gets one and the other kid gets four—most kids pull the red handle and walk away empty-handed. It might not just be pure spite: the sacrifice prevents another kid from gaining a relative advantage. “Kids are willing to pay the price to prevent the bad deal,” says Blake, director of BU’s Social Development & Learning Lab. “And it just becomes stronger with age.”
But a funny thing happens around age eight—kids begin rejecting the “good deal,” too, refusing to take four Skittles when the other child gets only one. “When we asked the children why,” says Blake, “they would say, ‘It’s not fair.’” Not fair, that is, to the other kid. “This seems like a behavior that is shaped by culture.”
The scientists had only tested children in the United States. Would the results hold across cultures? To find out, Blake teamed up with researchers in other countries to test a total of 866 pairs of children in Canada, India, Mexico, Peru, Senegal, Uganda, and the United States. The results were published in a November 2015 issue of Nature.
Children from all cultures rejected the bad deal (I-get-one-you-get-four), but the big surprise came with the good deal. The scientists had speculated that children in Canada, like those in the United States, would reject the good deal around age eight, because of common cultural norms. They did. “But it also showed up in Uganda, which kind of threw us,” says Blake, an assistant professor of psychological & brain sciences.
The scientists have a few possible explanations for the surprising find. Perhaps Western-trained teachers in Uganda transmitted cultural norms of fairness to their students; or, says Blake, children in other countries might see this type of fairness as a valuable trait, but one that applies only to adults.
The Skittle-ator studies contribute to a larger area of Blake’s research examining both the short- and long-term effects of scarcity and inequity on everything from IQ scores to self-confidence.
“We put kids in a situation where they’re either receiving less than a peer or more,” says Blake. “That’s kind of what children are born into, right? They’re born into a circumstance where they have less or more than others. There are bigger questions there, about when kids really become aware of this and whether it affects the rest of their lives.”
Advice for Parents
Accept that kids and adults view fairness differently.
If you asked a child how many Skittles they should share if they had ten, they’d probably say five; yet, put them on the spot—Skittles in hand—and they’ll only share one or two. Despite the discrepancy between what they know they should do and what they actually do, Peter Blake says children still view themselves as bighearted. “They see giving much less as being something that’s generous.”
Keep talking about sharing.
“One thing that we’ve learned,” says Blake, “is that if you’ve primed kids to think about what they should do first, they will give more—talking about fairness may actually have a positive effect.”
Join a study.
Blake and his team often conduct studies in public spots—the Boston Common, Boston Museum of Science—and online, so it’s easy to take part. Visit the Social Development & Learning Lab.—Advice reporting by Andrew Thurston