"Favoring my playmate seems fair": Inhibitory control and theory of mind in preschoolers' self-disadvantaging behaviors

TL;DR

This study explores how inhibitory control and theory of mind influence preschoolers' fairness-related decisions, revealing inhibitory control's key role in enabling self-disadvantaging behaviors to regulate selfishness and envy.

Contribution

It demonstrates that inhibitory control mediates the relationship between age and self-disadvantaging behaviors in preschoolers, highlighting its importance in fairness-related decision-making.

Findings

Preschoolers are more likely to give to others in first-party conditions.

Inhibitory control and theory of mind are positively correlated with self-disadvantaging choices.

Inhibitory control mediates the relationship between age and self-disadvantaging behaviors.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between preschoolers' cognitive abilities and their fairness-related allocation behaviors in a dilemma of equity-efficiency conflict. Four- to 6-year-olds in Experiment 1 (N = 99) decided how to allocate 5 reward bells. In the first-party condition, preschoolers were asked to choose among giving more to self (self-advantageous inequity), wasting one bell (equity) or giving more to other (self-disadvantageous inequity); while in the third-party condition, they chose to allocate the extra bell to one of two equally deserving recipients or to waste it. Results showed that compared to the pattern of decision in the third-party condition, preschoolers in the first-party condition were more likely to give the extra bell to other (self-disadvantaging behaviors), and age, inhibitory control (IC) and theory of mind (ToM) were positively correlated with their self-disadvantaging choices, but only IC mediated the relationship between age and self-disadvantaging behaviors. Experiment 2 (N = 41) showed that IC still predicted preschoolers' self-disadvantaging behaviors when they could choose only between equity and disadvantageous inequity. These results suggested that IC played a critical role in the implementation of self-disadvantaging behaviors when this required the control over selfishness and envy.