Journal Articles

1. Grocke, P; Rossano, F; Tomasello, M, Preschoolers consider (absent) others when choosing a distribution procedure., PloS one, vol. 14 no. 8 (January, 2019), pp. e0221186 [doi].
   (last updated on 2026/01/18)

   Abstract:
   This study investigated how the presence of others and anticipated distributions for self influence children's fairness-related decisions in two different socio-moral contexts. In the first part, three- and five-year-old children (N = 120) decided between a fair and an unfair wheel of fortune to allocate resources (procedural justice). In the second part, they directly chose between two distributions of resources (distributive justice). While making a decision, each child was either observed by the affected group members (public), alone (private), or no others were introduced (non-social control). Children choose the fair option more often when others were affected (independently of their presence) only in the procedural justice task. These results suggest that using a fair procedure to distribute resources allows young preschoolers to overcome selfish tendencies.