This study aimed to investigate differences in the way children in Brazil and USA allocate
resources and justify their decisions in a fictional situation. The sample was composed by
178 children of Brazilian parents: 98 Brazilian, living in Brazil, and 80 American children,
who had low familiarity with Brazilian culture. Participants were requested to resolve a
distributive dilemma during which characters with different personal attributes reunited
to a picnic in a public park. The results showed that most children preferred equality or
near-equality patterns of distribution to allocate the food among the characters of the
dilemma. Preference for other patterns of distribution like equity and need was related to
age and nationality. Also, children who used equality as justification for their distributions
were more consistent (that is, they distributed the food using an allocation system who
matched their justification) than children who used other types of justifications. Results are
discussed in light of recent works on sharing and processes of socialization during childhood.
© 2014 Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. This is
an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY-NC ND
Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).