The following research findings are from comparative psychologist Michael Tomasello, author of Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny.:

  • Apes don’t intervene or protest when a fellow ape is about to be harmed. Apes appear to have no sense of justice.  

  • Across cultures, three-year old human children do have a sense of justice, which is based on perceived need, merit, and rules.

  • Children begin helping around the same age (18 months) regardless of culture and despite different norms of helping.

  • Three-year olds consider merit when sharing resources. For example, they avoid taking objects effortfully obtained by a fellow toddler even though they could “get away with it”, as when the other toddler has gone of the room for a while.

  • Young children will not help a distressed child if her distress appears unjustified, such as crying over something trivial. They will only help when the distress seems justified by a clear cause.

  • In several cross-cultural studies, young children tasked with divvying up “windfall” goodies within a group preferred to distribute the goodies equally with the other children, as opposed to giving some children more than others.

  • Young children are more likely to share with children who have shared with others previously.

  • Five-year old children will not share group rewards with free riders, such as when tasked to divvy up goodies given to their group as a reward for completing a group project. So if little Sally just watched while the others worked, the other children would not share the reward with her.

  • Working together towards a group goal (“collaborating”) engenders a sense of “we” that leads children to see their partners as “equally deserving of the spoils.”

Per Tomasello, “some sense of deservingness… is crucial for the development of a morally-grounded sense of fairness.” The same applies to issues of social justice. Social justice is typically seen as a matter of who deserves what. Some people stress need. Others stress merit. And just about everyone considers rules, which includes laws, regulations, and norms.

Cross-cultural studies have found that most people agree with the following:

  • Distribute resources equally, when need and merit are equal and the rules allow it.

  • Give more to the needy at some threshold of neediness, regardless of merit.

  • If there are agreed upon rules, and resources are allocated unequally based on these rules, that’s okay.

  • Merit is partly based on considerations of effort, both quantity and quality.

Political differences are often a matter of disagreements about need, merit, and rules. In general:

  • Progressives stress equal distribution, which requires them to downplay merit and devalue some rules (e.g., legal protections for businesses).

  • Conservatives stress the role of merit in life outcomes, which leads them to downplay luck.

  • Economic conservatives accept the rule that a seller is entitled to keep what he is paid in a legal transaction. That includes sellers of labor and expertise, such as CEOs and hedge fund managers.

  • Progressives are more likely than conservatives (both economic and social) to consider needs in terms of rights to government assistance.

  • Conservatives accept the right to government assistance in case of need but consider need more narrowly than progressives.

  • Conservatives often consider patriotism in the sense of “we are working together on a common project”. In other words, they link “we” with “working together on a common project”. Hence, not much sympathy for free riders or those who are not part of the common project, e.g., people of other nations.

  • Progressives are more likely to see “we” as humanity in general, not a particular group or nation working together on a common project. Hence, progressives don’t see the point of patriotism.

Political differences can’t be reduced to disagreements about need, merit, and rules. But these essential disagreements do explain a lot.

References:

Aarøe, L. and M. B. Petersen (2014). " Crowding Out Culture: Scandinavians and Americans Agree on Social Welfare in the Face of Deservingness Cues" The Journal of Politics 76(3): 684-697.

Petersen, MB, Slothuus, R, Stubager, R, and Togeby, L (2011) Deservingness versus values in public opinion on welfare: The automaticity of the deservingness heuristic. European Journal of Political Research, 50: 24-52.

Michael Tomasello (2019) Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny. Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press