How Do Preschoolers Justify the Unequal Distribution of Resources between Friends and Peers? Combined Effects of Culture, Age, Competition and the Cost of Fairness

We tested how 204 British and Chinese preschoolers justify their allocations of resources in trials which varied who they were sharing with, whether they were competing and whether there was a cost to be fair. All of these factors interacted to show that preschoolers’ accounts of sharing are nuanced.