Resource Allocation 2: The role of expectations of reciprocity

This study is a follow-up to a previous study that examined whether 4- to 6-year-old children’s race-based economic decision making was shaped by their racial preferences. We assessed this by measuring the number of resources that children allocated to White and Black targets, using a Dictator Game paradigm, and then assessing children’s racial preferences and attitudes toward White and Black targets, using a feelings thermometer paradigm. In this study, we found that children engaged in race-based resource allocation, such that they allocated more resources to the White target than the Black target. However, children’s giving behavior was not predicted by their social preferences; children who held more positive attitudes toward White targets did not allocate more to the White target, nor did children who held more positive attitudes toward Black targets allocate more to the Black target. Moreover, greater giving to the White target was not driven by an ingroup bias; nonwhite children were actually more likely than White children to show greater allocation to White than Black targets. Together, the results from Study 1 suggest that children’s race-based resource allocation is driven by something other than racial preferences or attitudes. In this follow-up study, we test the idea that children’s race-based resource allocation instead stems from children’s expectations of reciprocity (i.e., children share more with those that they expect that to share with them in the future). As children at these ages sometimes believe that race is predictive of social status and resource-holding (such that White individuals are higher in social status and have more resources than Black individuals) children might be more likely to expect future reciprocity from White individuals, and thus choose to give White individuals more.