Distributive justice in traditional non-Western societies
Short description
There is a considerable variability in fairness principles across different communities from different parts of the world. Children growing up in various places therefore observe different practices and rules about how things are distributed in everyday interactions.
About the project
Children's communicative experiences are mediated by cultural factors as well. Unlike their Western peers, children in traditional small-scale societies do not usually grow up in small nuclear families and do not have one-on-one conversations with adults from early on. These children tend to learn about their social environment by observation, participation, and social bonding with friends and caregivers of different ages.
We study cultural differences in early prosocial development, the value societies place on caregivers’ communicative interactions with infants, the conversational content of these interactions, and how they mediate the cultural expectations about distributive justice.
Publications
Meristo, M., & Zeidler, H. (2022). Cross-cultural differences in early expectations about third party resource distribution. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1-6.
Meristo, M., Heise, M. J., Ueno, M., Itakura, S., Carlson, S. M. (review). East-West differences in attention begin in infancy.
