Sex Differences in Children's Concepts of Justice

Questioning subjects who ranged in age from 6 to I2 and who were from poorer parts of Geneva (Switzerland), Piaget has proposed the theory that a child's understanding of what is just changes with increasing chronological age (I2). For the younger child, he maintains, justice is to be sought in the authority person; for the older child it is to be found in reciprocity. Because Piaget's subjects represented only a single social-class stratum and because they were questioned only about stories depicting acts of physical aggression between children, the present writer, in earlier studies (2, 3, 4), questioned lowerand middle-class American of various ages about situations of physical aggression and also about other kinds of possible infractions of justice related to property-rights and to characterreputation. In the first of these studies (2) middle-class were questioned about acts of physical aggression described in stories, and their responses failed to duplicate the Piaget finding that children maintain with a conviction that grows with their years that it is strictly fair to give back the blows one has received (I2, p. 301). The youngest, but also the oldest, of the in the group tended to seek the just restoration of right order in the authority person. In another study (4) lower-class were questioned about acts of physical aggression, and again, even though similar in economic status to Piaget's subjects, their responses failed to corroborate the Piaget proposal. A majority of the oldest subjects still sought justice in the authority person. The third of these studies (3), again using middle-class as subjects, posed problems about infractions of justice other than the one of physical aggression. Data in this study indicated, first of all, that reciprocity as a principle of justice was proposed most frequently and consistently by the youngest of the subjects and, secondly, that the total group of subjects made quite different kinds of judgments when questioned about different kinds of behavior.