On the nature of fair behavior and its development with age

Economic decisions have been shown to depend on actual outcomes as well as perceived intentions. In this paper, we examine wether and how the relative importance of outcomes or intentions for economic decision develops with age. We report the resullt of ultimatum games with children, teens and students. We find that children and teens react systematically to perceived intentions. like students do. However, children and teens reject unequal offers much more often than students, indicating that outcomes are relatively more important tahn intentions for younger subjects.