The Development of a Scarcity Bias: Although a scarcity bias is not present in infancy, it emerges at 5 yo, prior to comprehension of market forces

The Development of a Scarcity Bias. Matar Ferera  Avi Benozio  Gil Diesendruck. Child Development, April 5 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13368

Abstract: Adults’ attraction to rare objects has been variously attributed to fundamental biases related to resource availability, self‐related needs, or beliefs about social and market forces. The current three studies investigated the scarcity bias in 11‐ and 14‐month‐old infants, and 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children (N = 129). With slight methodological modifications, participants had to choose between one of 10 same‐kind‐items (abundant resource), or the only one of a different kind (scarce resource). It was found that a robust preference for the scarce resource appeared only at age 5 years. Thus, although a scarcity bias is not present in infancy, it emerges prior to comprehension of market forces. Possible accounts of this developmental finding are discussed.

Open practice: The raw data of the studies reported in this paper will be made available on Gil Diesendruck’s laboratory website, at: https://faculty.biu.ac.il/~dieseng/publications.html.