Egalitarianism in young children

Human social interaction is strongly shaped by other-regarding preferences, that is, a concern for the welfare of others. These preferences are important for a unique aspect of human sociality—large scale cooperation with genetic strangers—but little is known about their developmental roots. Here we show that young children’s other-regarding preferences assume a particular form, inequality aversion that develops strongly between the ages of 3 and 8. At age 3–4, the overwhelming majority of children behave selfishly, whereas most children at age 7–8 prefer resource allocations that remove advantageous or disadvantageous inequality. Moreover, inequality aversion is strongly shaped by parochialism, a preference for favouring the members of one’s own social group. These results indicate that human egalitarianism and parochialism have deep developmental roots, and the simultaneous emergence of altruistic sharing and parochialism during childhood is intriguing in view of recent evolutionary theories which predict that the same evolutionary process jointly drives both human altruism and parochialism. The way that children interact in specially designed tests (well, games) can illuminate the mechanisms behind human altruism and cooperation. Fehr et al. present evidence that young children's other-regarding preferences (where 'Smarties, jellybabies and fizzers' are the rewards in a sharing game and an envy game) take a particular form — inequality aversion. This behaviour pattern develops between the ages of 3 and 8 years. Aged 3 or 4, most children behave selfishly, while by the age of 7 or 8 the vast majority prefer resource allocations that remove inequality. But if the removal of advantageous inequality involves costly sharing, the egalitarian allocation is chosen less often and children tend to favour members of their own social group. These findings suggest that egalitarianism and parochialism have deep developmental roots.