The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies
Abstract
A sense of fairness plays a critical role in supporting human cooperation. Adult norms of fair resource sharing vary widely across societies, suggesting that culture shapes the acquisition of fairness behaviour during childhood. Here we examine how fairness behaviour develops in children from seven diverse societies, testing children from 4 to 15 years of age (n = 866 pairs) in a standardized resource decision task. We measured two key aspects of fairness decisions: disadvantageous inequity aversion (peer receives more than self) and advantageous inequity aversion (self receives more than a peer). We show that disadvantageous inequity aversion emerged across all populations by middle childhood. By contrast, advantageous inequity aversion was more variable, emerging in three populations and only later in development. We discuss these findings in relation to questions about the universality and cultural specificity of human fairness.
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Children across studied cultures developed aversion to disadvantageous inequity, while advantageous inequity aversion was more prevalent in the West.
“For instance, [40] compared the acquisition of fairness behaviour in seven different societies: Canada, India, Mexico, Peru, Senegal, Uganda, and the USA, and found that while children from all cultures developed aversion towards disadvantageous inequity (avoid receiving less than a peer), advantageous inequity aversion (avoid receiving more than a peer) was more prevalent in the West.”
From Re-imagining Algorithmic Fairness in India and Beyond (2021) · cites this paper as [40]
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“…also consistent with prior research suggesting that most people exhibit egalitarian motives and a general preference for reducing inequality (e.g., Blake et al. 2015; Dawes et al. 2007) as well as with evidence indicating that a desire for equality is deeply rooted in the evolutionary path of…”
ResultPhillips, L. T., Jun, S., & Shakeri, A. (2022) · Academy of Management Annals · doi:10.5465/annals.2020.0314 · Cited by 53 · see citing works
Nakao, Y., Strappelli, L., Stumpf, S., Naseer, A., Regoli, D., & Gamba, G. D. (2022) · International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1080/10447318.2022.2067936 · Cited by 55 · see citing works
The social contingency of momentary subjective well-being
Rutledge, R. B., de Berker, A. O., Espenhahn, S., Dayan, P., & Dolan, R. J. (2016) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/ncomms11825 · Cited by 49 · see citing works
Theory of mind is related to children’s resource allocations in gender stereotypic contexts.
Rizzo, M. T., & Killen, M. (2017) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/dev0000439 · Cited by 48 · see citing works
“As reflected in their allocations, judgments of allocations, and reasoning, by 3 to 5 years old, children demonstrate an emerging understanding of equality (Blake et al., 2015; Cooley & Killen, 2015; Fehr, Bernhard, & Rockenbach, 2008), equity (Chernyak & Sobel, 2016; Li, Rizzo, Burkholder, & Killen, 2017; Mulvey, Buc…”
Children across societies enforce conventional norms but in culturally variable ways
Kanngießer, P., Schäfer, M., Herrmann, E., Zeidler, H., Haun, D. B. M., & Tomasello, M. (2021) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2112521118 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
Lucca, K., Yuen, F. L., Wang, Y., Alessandroni, N., Allison, O., Alvarez, M., Axelsson, E. L., Baumer, J., Baumgartner, H. A., Bertels, J., et al. (2024) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/desc.13581 · Cited by 70 · see citing works
“…Meristo and Zeidler 2022); these differing expectations for fairness in infants in the second year might reflect that infants are sensitive to the high levels of variation in fairness norms and behaviors that exist across diverse societies (Blake et al. 2015; Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan 2010).”
Self-citationEgalitarianism: psychological and socio-ecological foundations
Sheehy-Skeffington, J. A., & Thomsen, L. (2019) · Current Opinion in Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.08.014 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
Children's Acquisition and Application of Norms
Schmidt, M. F. H., & Hannes Rakoczy, B. (2023) · Annual Review of Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-devpsych-120621-034731 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
The Influence of Adult and Peer Role Models on Children’ and Adolescents’ Sharing Decisions
Ruggeri, A., Luan, S., Keller, M., & Gummerum, M. (2017) · Child Development · doi:10.1111/cdev.12916 · Cited by 46 · see citing works
No good deed goes unpunished: the social costs of prosocial behaviour
Raihani, N., & Power, E. A. (2021) · Evolutionary Human Sciences · doi:10.1017/ehs.2021.35 · Cited by 44 · see citing works
“Cross-cultural evidence generally suggests that responsiveness to local norms solidifies in middle childhood, and that this can precipitate important variation in prosocial behaviour (Amir & McAuliffe, 2020; Blake et al., 2015; Cowell et al., 2017; House et al., 2013; House, Kanngiesser, Barrett, Broesch, et al., 2020…”
BackgroundEssler, S., Lepach, A. C., Petermann, F., & Paulus, M. (2019) · Social Development · doi:10.1111/sode.12390 · Cited by 44 · see citing works
Theory of mind and resource allocation in the context of hidden inequality
Li, L., Rizzo, M. T., Burkholder, A. R., & Killen, M. (2017) · Cognitive Development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2017.02.001 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
Cooperation, decision time, and culture: Online experiments with American and Indian participants
Nishi, A., Christakis, N. A., & Rand, D. G. (2017) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0171252 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
A comparative approach to affect and cooperation
Massen, J. J. M., Behrens, F., Martin, J. S., Stocker, M., & Brosnan, S. F. (2019) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.09.027 · Cited by 44 · see citing works
Costly fairness in children is influenced by who is watching.
McAuliffe, K., Blake, P. R., & Warneken, F. (2020) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/dev0000888 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
Self-citationvan Berkel, N., Sarsenbayeva, Z., & Gonçalves, J. (2022) · International Journal of Human-Computer Studies · doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2022.102954 · Cited by 41 · see citing works
What We Do When We Define Morality (and Why We Need to Do It)
Dahl, A. (2023) · Psychological Inquiry · doi:10.1080/1047840x.2023.2248854 · Cited by 41 · see citing works
Third-party social evaluations of humans by monkeys and dogs
Anderson, J. R., Bucher, B., Chijiiwa, H., Kuroshima, H., Takimoto, A., & Fujita, K. (2017) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.01.003 · Cited by 41 · see citing works
“, 2010) and school-age children (Blake et al., 2015) living in different cultures show differences in what they consider to be fair or unfair exchanges.”
Kärtner, J. (2017) · Current Opinion in Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.07.040 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
Preschoolers’ group bias in punishing selfishness in the Ultimatum Game
Wu, Z., & Gao, X. (2017) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2017.08.015 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
“As reviewed above, at 6 years children dislike receiving fewer resources than others and even start giving up getting more than their partner to maintain equality (Blake & McAuliffe, 2011; Blake et al., 2015; McAuliffe et al., 2013; Shaw & Olson, 2012).”
BackgroundInfluentialThe preference for distributed helping.
Sharps, D. L., & Schroeder, J. (2019) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/pspi0000179 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
“Moreover, at least in some populations, people even dislike allocations that benefit the self more than others (Blake et al., 2015; Shaw & Choshen-Hillel, 2017).”
BackgroundInvestigating machine moral judgement through the Delphi experiment
Jiang, L., Hwang, J. D., Bhagavatula, C., Bras, R. J. L., Liang, J. T., Levine, S., Dodge, J., Sakaguchi, K., Forbes, M., Hessel, J., et al. (2025) · Nature Machine Intelligence · doi:10.1038/s42256-024-00969-6 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
Children’s fairness in two Chinese schools: A combined ethnographic and experimental study
Kajanus, A., McAuliffe, K., Warneken, F., & Blake, P. R. (2018) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2018.08.012 · Cited by 37 · see citing works
Self-citationEmotion prediction as computation over a generative theory of mind
Houlihan, S. D., Max Kleiman-weiner, A., Hewitt, L., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Saxe, R. R. (2023) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences · doi:10.1098/rsta.2022.0047 · Cited by 35 · see citing works
“Disadvantageous inequity aversion (DIA), a preference not to end up worse off than others, is a powerful and culturally conserved social preference [99,100].”
BackgroundFive-Year-Old Preschoolers’ Sharing is Influenced by Anticipated Reciprocation
Xiong, M., Shi, J., Wu, Z., & Zhang, Z. (2016) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00460 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
“It would be interesting for future studies to investigate whether the level of children’s strategic sharing and its underlying mechanisms vary across cultures.”
BackgroundHow social status influences our understanding of others’ mental states
Rizzo, M. T., & Killen, M. (2018) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2017.12.008 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
Fair Topologies: Community Structures and Network Hubs Drive Emergence of Fairness Norms
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Individual Differences in Theory of Mind Predict Inequity Aversion in Children
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Self-citationFair and Unfair Income Inequality
Cappelen, A. W., Falch, R., & Tungodden, B. (2020) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_130-1 · Cited by 35 · see citing works
Cultural evolutionary behavioural science in public policy
Schimmelpfennig, R., & Muthukrishna, M. (2023) · Behavioural Public Policy · doi:10.1017/bpp.2022.40 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
Developmental asymmetries in learning to adjust to cooperative and uncooperative environments
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Bernhard, R. M., Martin, J. W., & Warneken, F. (2020) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104909 · Cited by 34 · see citing works
Self-citationYoung Children's Theory of Mind Predicts More Sharing With Friends Over Time
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The Development of a Preference for Procedural Justice for Self and Others
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The Development of Theory of Mind and Positive and Negative Reciprocity in Preschool Children
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“A number of studies examining the development of preferences for fairness in children have used the UG (Takagishi et al., 2010, 2014; Blake and McAuliffe, 2011; Blake et al., 2015).”
“But he didn’t mean to do it”: Preschoolers correct punishments imposed on accidental transgressors
Chernyak, N., & Sobel, D. M. (2016) · Cognitive Development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2016.03.002 · Cited by 31 · see citing works
“Prior work has found that not until children are at least 8 years old do they reject allocations that are advantageously unfair (e.g., Blake & McAuliffe 2011; Blake et al., 2015).”
BackgroundParental teaching behavior in diverse cultural contexts
Köster, M., Torréns, M. G., Kärtner, J., Itakura, S., Cavalcante, L. I. C., & Kanngießer, P. (2022) · Evolution and Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2022.07.002 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
Early childhood investment impacts social decision-making four decades later
Luo, Y., Hétu, S., Lohrenz, T. M., Hula, A., Dayan, P., Ramey, S. L., Sonnier‐Netto, L., Lisinski, J. M., LaConte, S. M., Nolte, T., et al. (2018) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-018-07138-5 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
Chernyak, N., Harvey, T., Tarullo, A. R., Rockers, P. C., & Blake, P. R. (2018) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02209 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
“…societies have also been found to engage in costly enforcement of equality when they face a disadvantage relative to a peer, but cultural variation in fairness enforcement appears when children face an advantage over a peer, a relatively higher cost (Blake et al., 2015a; Corbit et al., 2017).”
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Choshen‐Hillel, S., Lin, Z., & Shaw, A. (2019) · Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization · doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2019.04.006 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
Normative foundations of reciprocity in preschoolers
Wörle, M., & Paulus, M. (2019) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104693 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
Rizzo, M. T., Li, L., Burkholder, A. R., & Killen, M. (2018) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/dev0000635 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
“Moreover, children negatively evaluate peers’ allocation decisions that produce a resource inequality (Cooley & Killen, 2015) and may even prefer to discard a resource rather than create an inequality between recipients (Blake et al., 2015; Shaw & Olson, 2012).”
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Behavioral Science and Education for Sustainable Development: Towards Metacognitive Competency
Hanisch, S., & Eirdosh, D. (2023) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su15097413 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
“…also include an understanding of where social norms come from and why it is that social norms play such a strong role in the behaviors and cultures of our species [89], how social norms develop, spread, can change in a population [90], and how variable they are cross-culturally (e.g., [91–93]).”
Background
- Authors
- Blake, P. R., McAuliffe, K., Corbit, J., Callaghan, T. C., Barry, O., Bowie, A., Kleutsch, L., Kramer, K. L., Ross, E., Vongsachang, H., Wrangham, R., & Warneken, F.
- Affiliations
- Boston University (US)
- Boston College (US)
- Simon Fraser University (CA)
- St. Francis Xavier University (CA)
- Cheikh Anta Diop University (SN)
- Harvard University (US)
- University of Utah (US)
- Corresponding author
- Blake, P. R.
- McAuliffe, K.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2015-11-18
- Volume
- 528
- Issue
- 7581
- Pages
- 258-261
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2177707862
- Cited by
- 534
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 40 · 2025: 51 · 2024: 92 · 2023: 59 · 2022: 62 · 2021: 54 · 2020: 38 · 2019: 38 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 38 · 2016: 28 · 2015: 2
- FWCI
- 96.55
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Cultural Differences and Values
- Keywords
- fairness, ontogeny, children, cultural variation, resource sharing, cooperation, developmental timing, cross-cultural comparison
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Age Factors, Child, Child, Preschool, Cooperative Behavior, Culture, Decision Making, Female, Humans, Male, Social Behavior, Social Change
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