Journal
JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 94, Issue 5, Pages 757-776Publisher
AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.94.5.757
Keywords
preference for the lucky; immanent justice; evaluative contagion; social cognitive development; cross-cultural psychology
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Funding
- NICHD NIH HHS [R01 HD023103-24, R01 HD023103-21, R01 HD023103-20, HD23103, R01 HD023103-26, R01 HD023103-23, R01 HD023103-25, R37 HD023103, R01 HD023103-22, R01 HD023103] Funding Source: Medline
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For millennia, human beings have believed that it is morally wrong to judge others by the fortuitous or unfortunate events that befall them or by the actions of another person. Rather, an individual's own intended, deliberate actions should be the basis of his or her evaluation, reward, and punishment. In a series of studies, the authors investigated whether such rules guide the judgments of children. The first 3 studies demonstrated that children view lucky others as more likely than unlucky others to perform intentional good actions. Children similarly assess the siblings of lucky others as more likely to perform intentional good actions than the siblings of unlucky others. The next 3 studies demonstrated that children as young as 3 years believe that lucky people are nicer than unlucky people. The final 2 studies found that Japanese children also demonstrate a robust preference for the lucky and their associates. These findings are discussed in relation to M. J. Lerner's (1980) just-world theory and J. Piaget's (1932/1965) immanent-justice research and in relation to the development of intergroup attitudes.
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