Recent research by Yucel and colleagues suggests that children perceive equality-based fairness violations (resources being distributed unequally) as less serious than prototypical moral harms, but that making the harmful consequences of unfairness salient shifts these judgments toward the moral domain. We examined whether merit-based fairness violations (someone receiving less than they earned) would similarly shift judgments toward the moral domain by making the injustice more salient. Replicating prior work, 4-year-old children (N = 62) rated prototypical moral violations as significantly more severe than equality-based fairness violations, which were rated as similar in severity to conventional violations. Contrary to predictions, merit-based fairness violations also showed this pattern: They were judged as less severe than prototypical moral violations and similarly severe as both equality-based fairness violations and conventional violations. Children also did not consistently group either type of fairness violation with moral or conventional violations. These findings contribute to a growing body of evidence that children’s (and adults’) perceptions of fairness—whether equality-based or merit-based—are more nuanced than previously thought and that unfairness may not spontaneously be treated like other, more prototypical moral norm violations.
Yucel et al. (Tue,) studied this question.