Data from: The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies

A sense of fairness plays a critical role in supporting human cooperation. Adult norms of fair resource sharing vary widely across societies, suggesting that culture shapes the acquisition of fairness behaviour during childhood. Here we examine how fairness behaviour develops in children from seven diverse societies, testing children from 4 to 15 years of age (n = 866 pairs) in a standardized resource decision task. We measured two key aspects of fairness decisions: disadvantageous inequity aversion (peer receives more than self) and advantageous inequity aversion (self receives more than a peer). We show that disadvantageous inequity aversion emerged across all populations by middle childhood. By contrast, advantageous inequity aversion was more variable, emerging in three populations and only later in development. We discuss these findings in relation to questions about the universality and cultural specificity of human fairness.公平感对维系人类合作具有关键作用。不同社会中成年人的公平资源分配规范存在显著差异，这表明文化会塑造儿童时期公平行为的习得过程。本研究针对七个不同社会的儿童，探究其公平行为的发展规律：我们采用标准化资源决策任务（standardized resource decision task），对年龄介于4至15岁的儿童（共866对被试）开展测试。本研究测量了公平决策的两个核心维度：不利不公平厌恶（disadvantageous inequity aversion，即同伴所得多于自身）与有利不公平厌恶（advantageous inequity aversion，即自身所得多于同伴）。研究结果显示，所有研究群体在童年中期均表现出不利不公平厌恶。相比之下，有利不公平厌恶的表现更具异质性，仅在三个研究群体中出现，且出现时间相对较晚。最后，我们结合人类公平感的普遍性与文化特异性相关议题，对上述研究发现展开讨论。