Cognitive Science & Psychology Division, ULAB

Fairness plays a significant role in children’s decision making and also carries meaningful social implications. In this study, our objective is to examine whether sensitivity to fairness develops before infants explicitly show fairness preferences. To further understand this, we replicated Lucca and Pospisil’s (2018) research to test whether infants (13- and 17- month-old infants) prefer to engage with individuals that exhibit fair or unfair behavior. In their study, infants were presented with a novel experimental paradigm in conjunction with video stimuli. Their results suggest that after infants witnessed an individual distribute goods to third parties equally and unequally, infants, both 13 month olds and 17 month olds,  actively chose to engage with individuals who distributed goods equally. Given their data, we completed statistical analyses and data manipulation techniques to identify any patterns about inclination towards fair or unfair actors. The Exact Binomial Statistical Test revealed statistical significance in data pertaining to both 13- and 17-month-olds between age and infant’s decision to socially engage with fair actors. Taken together, these findings are consistent with Lucca and Pospisil’s (2018) research. Infants demonstrate the expectation of fair distribution and prefer to interact with fair actors. This is important, as it gives greater insight into the timeline of fairness development over early years of life and may help explain behavior patterns seen during this age.