The origins of infants’ fairness concerns and links to prosocial behavior

The origins of infants’ fairness concerns and links to prosocial behavior. Jessica A. Sommerville, Elizabeth A. Enright. Current Opinion in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.01.005

Highlights
•    Infants possess a rudimentary sense of distributive fairness.
•    Infants expect resources to be distributed equally to recipients.
•    Infants evaluate individuals based on their adherence to fairness norms.
•    Sharing experience may drive the developmental acquisition of fairness norms.
•    Later, variability in the nature of infants’ sharing predicts fairness concerns.
•    Limitations exist in infants’ fairness concerns: they do not punish unfair agents.

Abstract: Concerns about fairness are central to mature moral judgments. We review research regarding the origins of a sensitivity to distributive fairness, and how it relates to early sharing. Infants’ sensitivity to fairness appears to be commensurate with that of school-age children: infants notice violations to fairness norms and evaluate individuals based on their fair or unfair behavior. However, it may differ in other ways: there is no evidence that infants punish unfair individuals. Sharing behavior plays a role in both the developmental emergence of, and subsequent individual differences in, infants’ fairness concerns. These results motivate novel questions, such whether infants can entertain other models of fairness, whether infants’ socio-moral concerns hang together, and the relationship early fairness sensitivities and later fair behavior.