Children's Fair Behavior In A Ultimatum Game

In the ultimatum game, people's fair behavior depends on not only the outcomes, but also the intentions underlying the outcomes. People compare their own gains and losses with others, as well as consider the intention leading to the final outcome.In our ultimatum game, players are in different situations which fair does not always mean equal, and so the responders need to take the intentions underlying the outcomes into account. A total of 112 children(68-84 months old, M=74.95) take part in this study, playing our ultimatum game. We want to find out how intentions underlying the outcomes affect children's fair behavior, and how children's behavior change when playing with different playmate(child or adult). Role reversal also affects the behavior of players in ultimatum game.We find that:(1) 6-year-old children's fair behavior is affected by intentions underlying the outcomes. The rejection rate of the same distribution plan in different situations is significant different, depending on the intentions that led to this outcome. Inequality may be acceptable if the proposer makes this outcome with out intending to do so. The majority of proposers choose the fair or relatively fair distribution plan in the either-or situation. (2) Comparing with playing with children, children generally tend to show obedience when they play with adults in our ultimatum game. The rejection rate of any distribution plan proposing by adult is much lower than the same distribution plan proposing by child. (3) After role reversal, children's fair behavior is affected by intentions underlying the outcomes more obviously, and the rate of children choosing relatively unfair distribution plan in two alternatives is much higher than children who don't go through the role reversal.