I’ll share with her, but not with you: A mixed methods approach to investigating children’s naïve theories about resource allocation decisions

Unlike in science and math content areas, little is known about how kids think about economics. Socio-constructivist learning theory contends this is problematic for kids’ learning. Specifically, new learning should build up on previous understandings and knowledge. If educators are unaware of kids’ previous understandings and knowledge, they cannot build on this knowledge. This study, the second phase of a multi-phase project, begins to fill that gap by employing a mixed methods approach to investigate how kids think about allocating resources. Based on my findings in the first phase, an ethnographic observation of second- and fourth-grade kids, I designed a multi-recipient dictator game where recipients were selected based on their role in the dictator’s social network. First, I used social network analysis to determine best friends, acquaintances, popular kids, and isolated kids in the dictator’s social network at school. Second, I used those recipients in one round of a multi-recipient dictator game and anonymous recipients in a second round. I found the relationship of the recipient with the dictator was significantly associated with the amount of resource they received, and that when recipients were anonymous, dictators were more likely to distribute resources equally. These findings contribute to our understanding of kids’ naïve theories about economics with implications for elementary economics benchmarks and curriculum.