Summary: A recent study examined how young children judge fairness and how those judgments shape their behavior, revealing nuanced gender differences in sharing and competitive actions. The researchers found that girls generally act with more compassion in resource distribution, while boys display more competitive or even spiteful behavior—especially toward other boys. At the same time, both boys and girls showed stronger envy reactions when boys received larger shares, suggesting social preferences toward boys that could reinforce gendered expectations from an early age.
The study’s findings illustrate that fairness attitudes in childhood are not uniform: they depend both on the child’s gender and on the gender of the interaction partner. These early patterns may contribute to the consolidation of gender stereotypes and social preferences as children grow.
Key findings
- Girls tended to reduce advantageous inequity and acted more compassionately in sharing tasks.
- Children of both genders showed greater envy when male recipients received more resources.
- Boys were more likely to act competitively or spitefully toward other boys, prioritizing their own gain even if it left a partner with nothing.
- Boys were comparatively more willing to share with girls than with other boys.
Source: HHU
Research background and objectives
Researchers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), Tilburg University, and the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna set out to clarify how fairness preferences develop in early childhood and whether those preferences are shaped by gendered expectations. Previous literature has suggested that women and girls may be more prosocial than men and boys, but the developmental trajectory and the role of the recipient’s gender remained unclear. The research team designed behavioral experiments to test whether an allocator’s choices are influenced not only by their own gender but also by the gender of the child receiving the resources.
Rather than using treats like ice cream, the experiments used smiley stickers as a low-stakes resource that children could allocate to themselves and a partner. The study included 332 children between the ages of three and eight. The experimental design manipulated whether equal distribution was costly to the allocator and varied the gender pairings to observe how allocations differed across same- and cross-gender interactions.
Across these controlled tasks, the researchers recorded when children opted for equal versus unequal splits, whether they accepted personal cost to make allocations fairer, and whether choices changed when the recipient’s gender varied. These behavioral patterns were then analyzed to identify age-related trends and gender-specific tendencies.
Principal results and interpretation
The data revealed clear gender-related patterns. Girls were more likely than boys to reject advantageous inequity—that is, they were more willing to sacrifice a personal advantage to achieve a fairer outcome. Boys, in contrast, showed a tendency toward competitive or spiteful choices, particularly when interacting with other boys: some chose the maximum possible reward for themselves even at the expense of leaving the partner with nothing.
Another notable pattern was an asymmetry in envy: allocators of both genders reacted more negatively when boys were favored by larger allocations. This suggests a bias in how children evaluate unequal outcomes depending on the recipient’s gender, with boys eliciting stronger envy responses overall.
Age effects also emerged. Older girls demonstrated what the authors describe as an envy bias in certain contexts: they were more tolerant of disadvantageous inequity when the better-off recipient was another girl, compared to when the better-off recipient was a boy. Meanwhile, the spiteful allocation pattern among boys became particularly pronounced in the 7–8 year age range, especially when rejecting advantageous inequity involved a personal cost.
Implications
The study suggests that gendered social behaviors and fairness preferences begin to form in early childhood and evolve with age. Because these preferences depend on both the allocator’s and recipient’s genders, they reflect contextualized social expectations rather than uniform moral reasoning. The authors propose that such early-emerging patterns could help explain why gender stereotypes persist into adolescence and adulthood.
Importantly, the findings also point to a window of opportunity: if gendered fairness preferences consolidate over extended developmental periods, early educational and social interventions could encourage less stereotyped, more equitable attitudes during childhood.
About this neurodevelopment and psychology research news
Author: Arne Claussen
Source: HHU
Contact: Arne Claussen – HHU
Image credit: Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access. “Egalitarian preferences in young children depend on the genders of the interacting partners” by Marijn van Wingerden et al., Communications Psychology. (Original publication in Nature Communications Psychology)
Abstract
Egalitarian preferences in young children depend on the genders of the interacting partners
In choices between equal and unequal resource distributions, women are often seen as more prosocial than men. While prior work has shown that fairness attitudes emerge in childhood, the developmental pathways and gendered patterns are not fully understood. This study tested 332 children aged three to eight in paired resource-allocation tasks with both boys and girls acting as allocators and recipients. The researchers found gender-related effects: girls were more likely than boys to reduce advantageous inequity, and allocators of both genders were less tolerant when boys were the better-off recipients. Older girls showed an envy bias, tolerating disadvantageous inequity more when the better-off recipient was a girl than when the recipient was a boy. A gender-related spite gap appeared in boys aged seven to eight: unlike girls, older boys sometimes preferred unfair distributions that benefited themselves to equal outcomes, particularly when rejecting advantageous inequity was costly. These patterns suggest contextualized, age-related gender differences in fairness preferences that may reflect prior same- and cross-gender interaction experiences.