ArticleDevelopmental review : DR2020
Why do preschoolers perpetuate inequalities? Theoretical perspectives on inequity preferences in the face of emerging concerns for equality.
Article in Developmental review : DR, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- The unintended negative consequences of help in childhood.Current directions in psychological science · 2025Article
- Children perpetuate competence-based inequality when they help peers.NPJ science of learning · 2023Article
- Structural explanations for inequality reduce children's biases and promote rectification only if they implicate the high-status group.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- 'I'm having jelly because you've been bad!': A grounded theory study of mealtimes with siblings in Australian families.Maternal & child nutrition · 2023Article
- Is Distributional Justice Equivalent to Prosocial Sharing in Children's Cognition?Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- Why do children show racial biases in their resource allocation decisions?Journal of experimental child psychology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Recent research has shown that preschool children tend to preferentially allocate resources to rich than to poor others. The findings that young children tend to perpetuate inequalities are puzzling given classical developmental theories that largely focused on the emergence of equality and equity in childhood. In this review, we first sketch the early ontogeny of fairness concerns before providing an overview on studies reporting perpetuation of inequality in young children. We review four classical theories (Piaget, Kohlberg, Damon, Social Domain Theory) and discuss how they would account for this phenomenon. We then introduce four recent theoretical models that directly speak to the underlying psychological processes; the affective preference model, the reciprocity-based strategic model, the numerical matching model, and the normative model. We highlight the key tenets of each model, their relation to other developmental processes, and the strength of the empirical evidence. From each model, we derive specific hypotheses. Finally, in an integrative section we discuss how the models might relate to each other, highlight connections to other research areas, and present avenues for future research.
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Registered trials
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