The ontogeny of children's social emotions in response to (un)fairness
Humans have a deeply rooted sense of fairness, but its emotional foundation in early ontogeny remains poorly understood. Here, we asked if and when 4- to 10-year-old children show negative social emotions, such as shame or guilt, in response to advantageous unfairness expressed through a lowered bod...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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The Royal Society
2022-08-01
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| Series: | Royal Society Open Science |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.191456 |
| _version_ | 1797840281541804032 |
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| author | Stella C. Gerdemann Katherine McAuliffe Peter R. Blake Daniel B. M. Haun Robert Hepach |
| author_facet | Stella C. Gerdemann Katherine McAuliffe Peter R. Blake Daniel B. M. Haun Robert Hepach |
| author_sort | Stella C. Gerdemann |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Humans have a deeply rooted sense of fairness, but its emotional foundation in early ontogeny remains poorly understood. Here, we asked if and when 4- to 10-year-old children show negative social emotions, such as shame or guilt, in response to advantageous unfairness expressed through a lowered body posture (measured using a Kinect depth sensor imaging camera). We found that older, but not younger children, showed more negative emotions, i.e. a reduced upper body posture, after unintentionally disadvantaging a peer on (4,1) trials than in response to fair (1,1) outcomes between themselves and others. Younger children, in contrast, expressed more negative emotions in response to the fair (1,1) split than in response to advantageous inequity. No systematic pattern of children's emotional responses was found in a non-social context, in which children divided resources between themselves and a non-social container. Supporting individual difference analyses showed that older children in the social context expressed negative emotions in response to advantageous inequity without directly acting on this negative emotional response by rejecting an advantageously unfair offer proposed by an experimenter at the end of the study. These findings shed new light on the emotional foundation of the human sense of fairness and suggest that children's negative emotional response to advantageous unfairness developmentally precedes their rejection of advantageously unfair resource distributions. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-09T16:12:24Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-78c1c12f4b63474188d1ee8b510a864a |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2054-5703 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-09T16:12:24Z |
| publishDate | 2022-08-01 |
| publisher | The Royal Society |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Royal Society Open Science |
| spelling | doaj.art-78c1c12f4b63474188d1ee8b510a864a2023-04-24T09:17:22ZengThe Royal SocietyRoyal Society Open Science2054-57032022-08-019810.1098/rsos.191456The ontogeny of children's social emotions in response to (un)fairnessStella C. Gerdemann0Katherine McAuliffe1Peter R. Blake2Daniel B. M. Haun3Robert Hepach4Department of Early Child Development, Leipzig University, Leipzig, GermanyDepartment of Psychology, Boston College, Boston, MA, USADepartment of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USADepartment of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, GermanyDepartment of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UKHumans have a deeply rooted sense of fairness, but its emotional foundation in early ontogeny remains poorly understood. Here, we asked if and when 4- to 10-year-old children show negative social emotions, such as shame or guilt, in response to advantageous unfairness expressed through a lowered body posture (measured using a Kinect depth sensor imaging camera). We found that older, but not younger children, showed more negative emotions, i.e. a reduced upper body posture, after unintentionally disadvantaging a peer on (4,1) trials than in response to fair (1,1) outcomes between themselves and others. Younger children, in contrast, expressed more negative emotions in response to the fair (1,1) split than in response to advantageous inequity. No systematic pattern of children's emotional responses was found in a non-social context, in which children divided resources between themselves and a non-social container. Supporting individual difference analyses showed that older children in the social context expressed negative emotions in response to advantageous inequity without directly acting on this negative emotional response by rejecting an advantageously unfair offer proposed by an experimenter at the end of the study. These findings shed new light on the emotional foundation of the human sense of fairness and suggest that children's negative emotional response to advantageous unfairness developmentally precedes their rejection of advantageously unfair resource distributions.https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.191456inequity aversionsocial emotionsKinectfairnessbody posture |
| spellingShingle | Stella C. Gerdemann Katherine McAuliffe Peter R. Blake Daniel B. M. Haun Robert Hepach The ontogeny of children's social emotions in response to (un)fairness Royal Society Open Science inequity aversion social emotions Kinect fairness body posture |
| title | The ontogeny of children's social emotions in response to (un)fairness |
| title_full | The ontogeny of children's social emotions in response to (un)fairness |
| title_fullStr | The ontogeny of children's social emotions in response to (un)fairness |
| title_full_unstemmed | The ontogeny of children's social emotions in response to (un)fairness |
| title_short | The ontogeny of children's social emotions in response to (un)fairness |
| title_sort | ontogeny of children s social emotions in response to un fairness |
| topic | inequity aversion social emotions Kinect fairness body posture |
| url | https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.191456 |
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