Abstract
The present study sought to evaluate the reproducibility of prominent
findings stated by Fehr et al. (2008) in their developmental resource
allocation experiment. The experiment involved children making decisions
about distributing sweets between themselves and either an in-group or
an out-group recipient. Fehr et al. found that (1) inequity aversion
develops with age; (2) 3- to 4-year-old children are inclined toward
self-advantageous allocations, whereas 7- to 8-year-olds distribute
sweets more evenly in divisions, and (3) the influence of group status
increases as children age. In our attempts to reproduce Fehr et al.’s
original analyses and reanalyse the raw data set, we found that one of
the key variables was miscoded. After rectifying the miscoded variable,
the reproduction results revealed only one ambiguously irreproducible
result regarding a group status main effect in the sharing
mini-game—with three other tests exhibiting either strong
reproducibility or ambiguous reproducibility following the
classifications suggested by Artner et al. (2021). Reanalysis results
indicated that Fehr et al.’s conclusions are robust when tested with
alternative analytical tests.