The Research On The Development Of The4to6Year Old Preschool Children’s Fairness Behavior And Intention

Fairness behavior is an important part of children’s moral development. In theprevious studies of the fairness behavior using the Game Paradigm, the subjects wereusually adults, and the conclusions of the fairness behavior’s age effect and sex effectwere not the same, lacking control the subjects’age span and the type and quantity ofresource allocation. In the studies of the fairness intention using the mini ultimatumgame, we can find that the fairness intention did affect adults’behavior decision. Butdoes this finding also fit for preschool children? How does the fairness intentiondevelop at different age? There were little researches. Meanwhile, the strategy methodin mini ultimatum game was not fit for preschool children. The studies on the fairnessmechanism were also little, and using the third-party task may reduce the selfishperformance. Therefore, in this study, we selected108preschool children aged4to6as subjects, provided two types resource allocation to control this factor and used firstparty game task to investigate the development and mechanism of the4to6year oldpreschool children’s fairness behavior and intention. We used the dictator game andthe ultimatum game in the experiment1, and used the improved version of the miniultimatum game in the experiment2. The following results were obtained:（1）The offers of the4to6years old preschool children in the dictator gameand the ultimatum game were significantly greater than zero. Both the games had ageeffect, but no sex effect. The interaction effect between the age and sex was also notexist.（2）To compare the offers between the dictator game and the ultimatum, wefound that the two offers of the children aged4had no significant difference, but thechildren aged5and6had. To further compare the offer difference between the twogames, we found that the offer difference between the children aged4and5hadsignificant difference, but not the children aged5and6, as well as the the childrenaged4and6.（3）The ascending order of rejecting the default allocation (8,2) in the fouralternative allocation is:（10,0）、（8,2）、（2,8）and（5,5). But the children aged4and5had the same rejection rate in the alternative allocation (8,2) and (2,8). Therejection rate of all the three ages were higher in the alternative allocation (5,5) than in the alternative allocation(10,0). The children aged4had a higher rejection rate thanthe children aged6in the alternative allocation (8,2) and (2,8).We could summarize following conclusions from these results:4year oldchildren already have the fairness behavior and intention. It is nurture that influencethe fairness behavior and intention profoundly. As the growth of age, children’sfairness behavior and intention also gradually grow. But in the process of acquired,because the gender behavior of preschool children aged4to6haven’t finalize thedesign, the development of children’s fairness does not exist gender difference at thisstage. Furthermore, the development of the fairness behavior is faster than the fairnessintention. The difference between children’s fairness behavior and intention begins at5years old. It is a critical period for the development of the fairness intention whenchildren at6years old. But further researches are needed on the following issues: Onwhich stage do the children’s fairness behavior and intention were both mature andhave the same pace? How the fairness development before the age of4?...