The Relationship Between Parenting Styles, Beliefs in Free‐Will, and 4–8‐Year‐Old Childrens' Beliefs About Fairness and Rectification of Social Inequality

ABSTRACT Recent work suggests that young children develop strong intuitions about inequitable resource distribution when it arises due to fair and unfair procedures (merit, structural, or random chance). Here, we investigated an understudied form of inequality: one that arises due to a single suboptimal choice (referred to as self‐inflicted inequality). Four‐to‐eight‐year‐old children ( n = 80) were exposed to two trials in which they watched a character become disadvantaged either due to not working hard enough (merit) or making a sub‐optimal choice (self‐inflicted) and were asked to make a fairness judgment and resource distribution. We also separately assessed children's beliefs in free‐will and parenting style. Results showed that children distributed more resources to someone disadvantaged due to a self‐inflicted inequality over a merit inequality, suggesting that children view the former inequality as less punishable. Qualitative data supported that self‐inflicted inequalities were viewed as relating to a mixture of choice and external constraints and explaining inequalities with reference to external constraints (vs. choice) systematically related to viewing inequalities as unfair and to allocating more stickers to the disadvantaged party. Furthermore, for older children, permissive parenting systematically related to beliefs that inequality was unfair. Finally, we also found links between free‐will beliefs and parenting: authoritative parenting related to a higher likelihood of beliefs that people act against social norms, while for younger children, authoritative parenting related to a lower likelihood of acting against social norms. This work demonstrates that by the age of 4, children can differentiate between self‐inflicted and merit inequality types and that permissive parenting encourages beliefs that all inequalities are unfair.