Six country-study finds children consistently take a stance against unfair sharing

Studies exploring the extent to which people are prone to “punishing” the selfish behavior of others can offer insight into their societal values, such as the importance they attribute to equality and fairness norms. Past findings suggest that there is great variation across countries when it comes to the tendency of uninvolved third parties to “punish” selfish individuals.

In other words, in some countries, people who are unaffected by another’s selfish actions tend to be more likely to intervene against this person’s behavior, even if this comes at a cost. While these differences in the third-party punishment of unfair sharing are well-documented, the developmental factors underpinning them have not yet been clearly delineated.

Researchers at Boston College, St. Francis Xavier University and other institutes worldwide recently carried out a study aimed at determining whether variations in the tendency to punish unfair behavior emerge during childhood. Their paper, published in Communications Psychology, shows that groups of children in six different countries all appear to predominantly take a stance against unfair sharing.

“When do children across societies begin to pay a cost to prevent unfair sharing?” wrote Katherine McAuliffe, Samantha Bangayan and their colleagues in their paper. “We present an experimental study of third-party punishment of unfair sharing across 535 children aged 5–15 from communities in six diverse countries: Canada, India, Peru, Uganda, USA, and Vanuatu.”

To better understand the tendency of children in these six countries to pay a cost to punish the selfish behavior of other children, the researchers carried out a series of experiments. In these experiments, the children witnessed the distribution of six candies between two parties.

The person dividing the candies either split them equally, giving three candies to each person, or selfishly, keeping six candies all for themselves. Children were then asked if they wished to punish the person who divided the candies. Notably, in one experimental condition, punishing the person dividing the candies was free, while in the other it could only be done at a cost (i.e., by sacrificing one candy, which the children could keep at the end of the study).

“We tested whether children were more likely to punish equal or selfish (maximally unequal) distributions between two absent peers,” wrote the researchers. “We also tested whether decisions depended on whether such punishment was costly—participants had to sacrifice their own rewards to punish—or free.”

Overall, McAuliffe, Bangayan and their colleagues found that, on average, children in all the six countries they examined were prone to punish selfish behavior that did not directly affect them. However, in some countries (i.e., Canada and the USA) children appeared to be more likely to punish selfishness if it did not come at a cost to them.

“Our study generated three main findings,” wrote the researchers. “First, children across societies engaged in third-party punishment of selfishness: they were more likely to punish selfish than equal distributions. Second, older children were more likely than younger children to punish selfish sharing in Canada, India, Peru, and the USA. Third, children in Canada and the USA punished more in general in the Free condition than in the Costly condition, whereas children in Uganda punished selfishness more in the Costly condition.”

The results of this recent work suggest that the third-party punishment of unfair sharing does not vary significantly between children in Canada, India, Peru, Uganda, the USA and Vanuatu. This suggests that fairness norms are widespread worldwide and can appear at early stages of development.

“These findings show that children from six diverse societal contexts consistently took a stance against unfair sharing, in some cases even sacrificing their own rewards to intervene against selfishness in their peers,” wrote the researchers. “We highlight and discuss similarities and differences in cross-societal patterns of age-related differences in third-party punishment and suggest potential explanations for these patterns.”

The findings could soon inform additional studies exploring differences in the tendencies of children in countries to intervene when witnessing the unfair distribution of resources or rewards. This could in turn shed new light on the developmental origin of fairness-related societal values, as well as external factors that could explain previously reported differences across countries.

© 2025 Science X Network