The role of group's social status in children's fairness judgments

Children consider various cues when making social decisions. As they socialize, children's knowledge of social dynamics improves. Combining this knowledge with the inferences about social status, they form their social decisions and judgments. The current study focused on the effects of the group size (majority, minority) and social status on their endorsement of group decisions and the fairness judgments of these decisions. In the current study, the social status depended on the groups' wealth status. 6-7 and 10-11 year-olds were introduced two novel groups differing in terms of their wealth status and group size. After being presented with different decisions by the groups, children were asked which group's decision should be applied. Furthermore, they were also expected to judge the fairness level of applying each group's decisions separately. While young children generally endorsed the decision of the rich group, older children endorsed the decision of the poor group, regardless of the groups' majority and minority status. The potential underlying mechanisms for these choices, as well as the developmental changes, are discussed.