The Development Of Children’s Distributive Behavior And Its Relationship With Theory Of Mind In The Context Of Social Power Inequality

Social inequality can affect children’s social behavior.When children make a new round of resource allocation to individuals or groups in social inequality situations,they show two different ways of allocation behavior,one is to allocate more resources to the dominant party to maintain or perpetuate the original inequality,and the other is to allocate less resources to the dominant party to correct or compensate for the original inequality.However,most current research on children’s distributive behavior in situations of social inequality is based on the inequality of social resources,there are few researches on the distribution behavior of children in the context of social power inequality.In addition,previous studies have found that theory of mind is related to children’s fair distribution behavior,while children’s compensation distribution to social inequality belongs to fair distribution.Therefore,the relationship between children’s distributive behavior and theory of mind in the context of social power inequality needs to be further explored.Therefore,the purpose of this study is to investigate the developmental characteristics and the influence of theory of mind of 3-8-year-old children in the situation of social power inequality.In this study,184 3-to 8-year-old children’s false belief task performance and allocation behavior were investigated under the situation of social power inequality by using the story situation task of third-party resource allocation,to explore the distribution behavior of children under the situation of social power inequality and its relationship with theory of mind.The results are as follows:(1)There are two kinds of distributive behaviors among 3-8-year-old children in the situation of social power inequality,with the growth of age,The distribution behavior of children changes from matching distribution to compensation distribution.(2)the preference of 3-8-year-old children in the situation of social power inequality changed from the preference of the dominant to the subordinate.(3)theory of mind is an important predictor of changes in children’s distribution patterns,and the percentage of children who adopt compensatory distribution patterns through theory of mind tasks is higher than the percentage of children who do not.