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The developmental foundations of human fairness

Nature Human Behaviour volume 1, Article number: 0042 (2017) Cite this article

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Abstract

New behavioural and neuroscientific evidence on the development of fairness behaviours demonstrates that the signatures of human fairness can be traced into childhood. Children make sacrifices for fairness (1) when they have less than others, (2) when others have been unfair and (3) when they have more than others. The latter two responses mark a critical departure from what is observed in other species because they enable fairness to be upheld even when doing so goes against self-interest. This new work can be fruitfully combined with insights from cognitive neuroscience to understand the mechanisms of developmental change.

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Figure 1
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Figure 4: Diagram showing the developmental changes in the emergence of fairness behaviours in childhood along with the neurocognitive mechanisms hypothesized to explain the observed shifts from fairness for oneself to fairness for others.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank J. Greene, B. Güroğlu, D. Knoch, L. Somerville, and L. Young for their feedback on this review. N.S. is supported by an Early Career Research Fellowship from the Jacobs Foundation. F.W. is supported by an NSF CAREER grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, 02467, Massachusetts, USA

    Katherine McAuliffe

  2. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, 02215, Massachusetts, USA

    Peter R. Blake

  3. Department of Developmental Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, 2333AK, The Netherlands

    Nikolaus Steinbeis

  4. Department of Social Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, 04103, Germany

    Nikolaus Steinbeis

  5. Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Felix Warneken

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  1. Katherine McAuliffe
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Correspondence to Katherine McAuliffe.

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McAuliffe, K., Blake, P., Steinbeis, N. et al. The developmental foundations of human fairness. Nat Hum Behav 1, 0042 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-016-0042

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