Science publishes new study on the development of fairness and inequality acceptance

Fairness research at NHH (Photo: Knut Egil Wang)

A new NHH study on fairness and development of inequality acceptance among Norwegian school children is launched today by Science (Friday 28 May 2010). The study shows that perceptions of fairness change fundamentally in adolescence and that with age children increasingly accept inequalities based upon individual achievements.

28.05.2010 - Ed.

One of the most fundamental questions in the social sciences is how morality and fairness considerations affect human behavior. Previous research has shown that adults differ greatly both in the extent to which they care about fairness considerations and in what they perceive as fair.

Professor Bertil Tungodden.

- This is, however, the first economic study to show how some of these differences are shaped in adolescence. In doing so, the study also sheds light on how our perceptions of fairness are affected both by the social environment and biological factors, explains Professor Bertil Tungodden.

The study was conducted at NHH's Department of Economics by a research team consisting of Assistant Professor Ingvild Almås, Professor Alexander W. Cappelen, Associate Professor Erik Ø. Sørensen, and Professor Bertil Tungodden.

With the article "Fairness and the Development of Inequality Acceptance", the NHH researchers become the first all-Norwegian social science research team to publish in Science.

What is a fair inequality?

Professor Alexander W. Cappelen.

Most adults find some inequalities fair. Hence, in contrast, to young children, they do not always think of strict equality as the fair solution to a distributive problem. What explains this, and how does this acceptance of inequality develop?

These were motivating questions for the present study of the distributive behavior of 500 Norwegian school children 11-19 years old.

- By comparing the behavior for different age groups, we were able to established clear developmental patterns. In particular, the study shows that as children grow older, they increasingly find inequalities reflecting differences in individual achievements fair, continues Professor Tungodden.

Just luck?

Assistant professor Ingvild Almås.

In the experiment, the children worked on a task for 45 minutes. At the end of the work session, some were lucky and received a high price on their production; others were unlucky and received a low price. Thus, there were inequalities in earnings that reflected differences in both individual production and luck.

Each participant then had to decide how to distribute the total earnings between themselves and one other participant. Hence, they had to decide which inequalities they found fair.

- Here we observed a very interesting pattern, adds Professor Tungodden.

- While almost none of the younger children made a distinction between luck and individual production, a substantial share of the older children did so. They accepted inequalities reflecting differences in individual production, but not inequalities reflecting just luck.

Not so selfish

Associate professor Erik Ø. Sørensen.

The children did not only have to consider how to think about fairness in their distributive choices, but also the extent to which they should act selfishly. In fact, they had the opportunity to take all of the earnings to themselves, leaving nothing to the other participant. In this way, the researchers could study how the level of selfishness develops in adolescence.

Maybe surprisingly, the results show that the common intuition of the selfish adolescent does not hold true.

- Children in late adolescence gave away as much as the youngest children, both among males and females. Hence, the study clearly demonstrates that the most fundamental change in adolescence is related to how children perceive fairness, not the importance they attach to it, Professor Tungodden explains.

Listen to podcast with Professor Bertil Tungodden at sciencemag.org