Even Three-Year-Olds Have Sense Of Justice

LONDON: Toddlers have an intuitive sense of justice as they prefer to treat others the way they expect themselves to be treated, a research said.

But unlike adults, they are not much interested in doling out punishment. They would rather console a victim, the study showed.

For instance, young children prefer to return lost items to their rightful owners.

"The chief implication is that a concern for others - empathy, for example - is a core component of a sense of justice," said Keith Jensen of University of Manchester.

"This sense of justice based on harm to victims is likely to be central to human pro-sociality as well as punishment, both of which form the basis of uniquely human cooperation."

Both three- and five-year-old children are just as likely to respond to the needs of another individual - even when that individual is a puppet - as they are to their own.

In human society, cooperation is often encouraged by punishing free-riders. However, earlier studies have shown that chimpanzees do not punish cheaters unless they themselves have been harmed directly.

To find out what motivates a sense of justice in young children, researchers gave three- and five-year-olds the opportunity to take items away from a puppet that had "taken" them from another.

Those children were as likely to intervene on behalf of a puppet "victim" as they were for themselves. When given a range of options, three-year-olds preferred to return an item than to remove it.

"It appears that a sense of justice centred on harm caused to victims emerges early in childhood."

The results appeared in the journal Current Biology.

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