Across six societies children engage in costly third-party punishment of unfair sharing.

ABSTRACT: Third-party punishment of unfairness shows striking cross-societal variation in adults, yet we know little about where and when in development this variation starts to emerge. When do children across societies begin to pay a cost to prevent unfair sharing? We present an experimental study of third-party punishment of unfair sharing across N = 535 children aged 5-15 from communities in six diverse countries: Canada, India, Peru, Uganda, USA, and Vanuatu. We tested whether children were more likely to punish equal or selfish (maximally unequal) distributions between two absent peers. We also tested whether decisions depended on whether such punishment was costly-participants had to sacrifice their own rewards to punish-or free. Our study generated three main findings. First, children across

SUBMITTER: McAuliffe K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11914412 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature