Distributive Justice

The making of moral decisions about sharing resources such as rewards or possessions

• <5
• Children understand sharing based on possible personal gain
• 'I should get what I want because I want it'

• By age 5
• Judgements about sharing are based on equality
• Everyone should get an equal share, irrespective of individual effort or need 
• There is a clear rule about distribution, but this is inflexible 
• 'Everyone should get the same'

• By age 7
• Decisions start to be based on the ideas of merit 
• 'The person who works the hardest deserves the most reward'

• By age 8-9
• Reasoning is based on benevolence, understanding that some people should have special consideration, perhaps because  of their disadvantage
• 'The smallest person in the class should have the best seat in the school concert so that they can get a better view'

To investigate age related changes in reasoning about distributive justice

• Children aged 4-10 were given dilemmas about sharing 
• The children were interviewed and their responses were recorded

• Children from 4-5 focussed on what they wanted or tried to justify having more base on some subjective attributes such as gender
• Children from 5-7 thought everyone should have an equal share of profits 
• Children >7 showed consideration of individual merit and need

As children get older, reasoning about distributive justice moves from emphasis on self gratification to focus on individual merit and the needs of others

• Children were presented with exactly the same dilemma and asked to choose a picture out of two with what they felt to be the correct outcome 
• The results matched Damon's stages and were sourced from P's from USA, Sweden and Zaire
• This also provides cross cultural support to DJ

• It focusses on distribution of resources rather than morality involved in wrongdoing 
• This offers a different perspective into moral development

The findings parallel the shift in emphasis from reasoning based on self interest to reasoning based on the needs of others

The research is based on dilemmas which are experienced in the everyday life

It has been replicated in other countries giving it cross cultural support

• American children focussed on merit when dividing resources 
• Children from the Philippines were more concerned about the effects of unequal distribution or group harmony 
• This suggests that there might be differences between individualist and collectivist cultures

• Merit is more likely to be used in interaction with friends whereas benevolence is more important with interaction with strangers 
• This suggests that DJ is more complex than Damon suggests

• Males are more likely to reason by equality whilst females females show more complex reasoning, considering issues such as relationships and context 
• This supports Gilligan's theory of gender differences in morality

• The dilemma posed is hypothetical so might not reflect how children would actually share
• DJ might not have predictive validity as it cannot effectively predict actual behaviour

• Children in groups of 4 were asked to make bracelets using beads 
• The groups were manipulated in terms of age and other factors so that some were more productive than others
• At the end of the task each group was given 10 chocolate bars to share 
• The P's were interviewed individually about how they they believed the sweets should be shared 
• 10% of children showed more advanced reasoning in the actual sharing than they did in the hypothetical dilemmas 
• 40% showed less advanced reasoning in real life suggesting that real life reasoning may be less sophisticated than hypothetical reasoning