Fair is fair. Norwegian school children in this study worked hard to earn their money before deciding on a fair way to share it.
Credit: Image courtesy of Knut Egil Wang
Posted on 05/28/2010 8:56:32 PM PDT by neverdem
Children start off like Karl Marx, but they eventually become more like a member of the International Olympic Committee. That's the conclusion of a new study, which finds that children's views on fairness change from egalitarian to merit-based as they grow older. The results help explain why society rewards high achievers with high pay, and they could help educators better motivate children.
The find comes thanks to an economic experiment known as the dictator game. Researchers led by experimental economist Alexander Cappelen of the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen recruited youths aged 10 through 18 from schools near Bergen. Each child was paired with another student he or she didn't know and then given a chance to earn real money by repeatedly noting the appearance of a particular three-figure number on a computer screen filled with large tables of numbers. Some students performed better at the task and thus earned more money. At the end of the game, the money earned by the pair was pooled, and one of the two students—the dictator—was asked to divvy up the cash with his or her partner in a way that he or she deemed fair.
Age determined how evenly the children divided up the earnings. About two-thirds of the youngest children, aged 10 to 11, split the pot evenly regardless of their own or their partner's achievements. Older teenagers, however, split the pot based on achievement. Among 18-year-olds, for example, only 22% split the pot evenly with their partner, whereas 43% kept more for themselves because they felt like they'd earned it, the researchers report in tomorrow's issue of Science.
The results suggest that concepts of fairness become more merit-based as children grow up and as they participate in activities like sports and school that reward achievement, Cappelen says. "Adolescence is a very important period for shaping children's fairness views." The results could also help educators set up reward systems that the students themselves consider fair, he adds, which could lead to more harmonious classrooms and better student performance.
"I think it's an interesting and important study," says behavioral economist James Konow of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. But he is not as convinced as the authors that concepts of fairness are shaped by experience.
Listen to a podcast about this story.
Academia moves a century ahead of Islam...only 1300 years of knowlege left to catch up on to reach reality.
I wonder how many of the dictators decided to kill their partner and keep it all for themselves.
Kids are born knowing only that they want “things”, it’s only later that they mature enough to know that “things” have costs associated with them.
I’ll add 2 more: The nuclear family tends to be socialistic, even communistic. Which is fine for a group of people related by blood and who reciprocate unconditional love toward each other. But that relationship doesn’t translate upward into anything bigger than a family group. Not even a tribe, and certainly not a nation. Liberals either don’t understand this, or they desperately wish it were so (perhaps because they were missing something in their own family lives, so try to force the society to make up for it writ large).
That is a big part of it I think. They see small groups that get along and support each other, and try to move that to all groups.
If you are a conservative at 18, you have no heart. If you are a liberal at 30, you have no brains.
Ha! That's the entire story of the failure of the Great Society in one sentence! Pretty precocious kid... :)
We do that here & have since my daughter was about 3 yrs old too. We go through the unused toys & IF Sassy wants new toys she must make room. Special toys are put away for her but what is no longer interesting gets passed on. If she doesn’t want to get rid of toys she gets less. She has learned to share & to give happily. I don’t know how she will turn out but so far she is a very nice child. Thankfully she is into horses so now all she wants is horse stuff & my house is less cluttered. But she also works hard to have her 2 horses, soon to be 3 & has learned to work hard. As soon as she is 13 she will earn her own lessons by cleaning stalls & that was her own idea.
That actually makes sense, when dad isn’t there, the state is your dad.
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Me too.
I have seen communism work among adults in only one situation.
Every year I go deer hunting and then elk hunting two weeks later, with a group of friends. The work is always shared among the group, and the meat from any animals is always shared evenly.
I think the only reason it works out is that the group is small, everyone is fair, and there is a lot of work to go around.
The notion of ‘socialist’ fairness on younger children is not necessarily natural. They were socialized to these values when they were very little. See many parents teach their toddlers to share their toys with their siblings, friends, etc. They do this out of fear that the child would otherwise grow to be an anti-social who doesn’t want to share anything with other people.
And everyone has a gun.
I have a friend who has horses and she says they are wonderful animals that requires allot of work. Good for you daughter and her passion.
sequel idea: “How some socialists never outgrow childhood”. THanks neverdem.
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