Abstract:

Distributive justice concerns how individuals distribute resources in a fair manner, including three main principles: equity, equality and need. Firstly, we review the concepts and principles of distributive justice based on the equity principle. Secondly, the paper examines the characteristics of distributive justice judgment and behavior on young children, with conclusion that young children could perform distributive justice judgment and behavior. Then the paper examines the factor influencing the development of children’s distributive justice including theory of mind and situational involvement level from two key aspects of cognitive and emotional processing. Finally, the paper calls for future research to focus on the specific content, exploring the developmental characteristics, influencing factors and internal mechanism of young children's distributive justice based on the principle of equity.

Key words: young children, distributive justice, equity principle, theory of mind, situational involvement level