“No Fair!”: Children’s Perceptions of Fairness in Merit-Based Distributions

= 62) rated prototypical moral violations as significantly more severe than equality-based fairness violations, which were rated as similar in severity to conventional violations. Contrary to predictions, merit-based fairness violations also showed this pattern: They were judged as less severe than prototypical moral violations and similarly severe as both equality-based fairness violations and conventional violations. Children also did not consistently group either type of fairness violation with moral or conventional violations. These findings contribute to a growing body of evidence that children's (and adults') perceptions of fairness-whether equality-based or merit-based-are more nuanced than previously thought and that unfairness may not spontaneously be treated like other, more prototypical moral norm violations.