Native Amazonian children forego egalitarianism in merit-based tasks when they learn to count
Cooperation often results in a final material resource that must be shared, but deciding how to distribute that resource is not straightforward. A distribution could count as fair if all members receive an equal reward (egalitarian distributions), or if each member's reward is proportional to t...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Wiley Blackwell,
2015-11-23T12:43:33Z.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get fulltext |
| Summary: | Cooperation often results in a final material resource that must be shared, but deciding how to distribute that resource is not straightforward. A distribution could count as fair if all members receive an equal reward (egalitarian distributions), or if each member's reward is proportional to their merit (merit-based distributions). Here, we propose that the acquisition of numerical concepts influences how we reason about fairness. We explore this possibility in the Tsimane', a farming-foraging group who live in the Bolivian rainforest. The Tsimane' learn to count in the same way children from industrialized countries do, but at a delayed and more variable timeline, allowing us to de-confound number knowledge from age and years in school. We find that Tsimane' children who can count produce merit-based distributions, while children who cannot count produce both merit-based and egalitarian distributions. Our findings establish that the ability to count - a non-universal, language-dependent, cultural invention - can influence social cognition. National Science Foundation (U.S.). Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering Program (Grant 1022684) University of Rochester |
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