Abstract: Fairness or justice as the eternal pursuit of human beings is an important topic shared by psychology, economics and many other disciplines. Method of story is often used by developmental psychologists to explore children’s reasoning about distributive fairness. The introduction of game theoretical paradigm provides a new approach and perspective to study children’s fair behavior. The paper mainly reviewed children’s development of fair behavior in experimental games and the reasons for the contradictory age trends was analyzed. The in-group bias in fair behavior, the nature of fair behavior: outcomes versus intentions and the relationship between theory of mind and children’s fair behavior were discussed. Finally, the paper suggested that future research on children’s fair behavior must keep the social context in mind as well as children’s social cognitive abilities.

Key words: fairness, experimental games, in-group bias, intention, theory of mind