Young children' Moral Evaluations of Favoritism: The Roles of Benevolence and Friendship Principles

Early childhood is a critical period for moral development and social norm internalization. Previous research has demonstrated that young children’s resource allocation is influenced by recipients’ needs and friendship relationships, but it remains unclear how young children evaluate others' favoritism in allocation tasks, particularly when benevolence and friendship principles conflict. This study investigated young children’s (M = 5.03 years, SD = 0.53) moral evaluations of favoritism through three experiments. Experiment 1a (N=80) examined evaluations of benevolence-based favoritism (favoring poor vs. rich recipients); Experiment 1b (N = 80) explored friendship-based favoritism (favoring friends vs. non-friends); and Experiment 2(N = 80) focused on evaluations when principles conflicted (favoring rich friends vs. poor non-friends).