The development of gender biases in the attribution of distributive fairness

We explored the early emergence and development of gender biases concerning expectations of fairness in the context of distributive actions. Children aged 2.5-, 6-, and 9 years, and adults watched events displaying fair and unfair distributive actions performed by a hidden distributor, and then, they were asked to guess the identity of the distributors by reaching for one of two drawings, or photos, depicting a male and a female face. Children attributed the fair distribution of resources more frequently to the male than to the female distributor, and they attributed the unfair distribution more frequently to the female distributor. Adults, by contrast, showed the opposite pattern of responses. Overall, these findings provide evidence of an early-emerging gender bias in reasoning about distributive fairness and support the prior literature on late-occurring developmental shifts in gender prejudices.