Native Amazonian children forego egalitarianism in merit-based tasks when they learn to count
Cooperation often results in a final material resource that must be shared, but deciding how to distribute that resource is not straightforward. A distribution could count as fair if all members receive an equal reward (egalitarian distributions), or if each member's reward is proportional to t...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Wiley Blackwell
2015
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/99974 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6167-1647 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5912-883X |
| Summary: | Cooperation often results in a final material resource that must be shared, but deciding how to distribute that resource is not straightforward. A distribution could count as fair if all members receive an equal reward (egalitarian distributions), or if each member's reward is proportional to their merit (merit-based distributions). Here, we propose that the acquisition of numerical concepts influences how we reason about fairness. We explore this possibility in the Tsimane’, a farming-foraging group who live in the Bolivian rainforest. The Tsimane’ learn to count in the same way children from industrialized countries do, but at a delayed and more variable timeline, allowing us to de-confound number knowledge from age and years in school. We find that Tsimane’ children who can count produce merit-based distributions, while children who cannot count produce both merit-based and egalitarian distributions. Our findings establish that the ability to count – a non-universal, language-dependent, cultural invention – can influence social cognition. |
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