Category: SDLL
Just rewards: Study of children challenges economists’ notions of rational behavior
A Harvard University study built around an innovative economic game indicates that, at least for our younger selves, the desire for equity often trumps the urge to maximize rewards.
“We were able to show that 8 year olds have a general sense of fairness and are willing to make large sacrifices to enforce it with other children,” said Peter Blake, at the time a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics and now an assistant professor at BU. Blake coauthored the study with Katherine McAuliffe, a doctoral student at Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. “Children younger than 8 are more self-interested, yet they’re still willing to deny themselves rewards in order to prevent a transaction that’s unfair to them,” said Blake.
Sharing Among Children
Over Christmas I spent some time in Germany, where I visited the Children's Science Museum in Cologne. The place was packed with kids who were enthusiastically participating in all kinds of experiments and hands-on research activities, so that I could not help but think to myself: "What a cool place this would be to collect developmental data. Think about it: Thousands of observation points for children of varying ages...and..."...
I guess I didn't finish the thought, but must have become distracted by some amazing perceptual illusion, or the free-throw shooting robot on the "computer and technology floor"...
Science of Sharing: Podcast
Learn about a research study conducted in the Museum of Science's Living Laboratory by Harvard graduate students Peter Blake and David Rand that teases out at what age children are willing to share.
Sharing and Fairness
If you have children, you know that teaching them to share and play fair is a tall order. So, when does it click, and how?
