Children's distributive justice behavior probably not matching their understanding: a systematic review

Children have an awareness of distributive justice but do not always show the corresponding behaviors in allocation-a phenomenon known as inconsistency between knowledge and action. This article introduces the phenomenon, explains the reason why the phenomenon has been discovered in recent years from perspective of theoretical evolution, explains the reason for children's preference that lead to the phenomenon, and explains the mechanism by which children progress toward unity of knowledge and action from the perspectives of conscious awareness and motivation. Further research is needed to construct a new theory of distributive justice development in children, to strengthen the understanding of the neural mechanism involved in the development of fairness in children, and to perform longitudinal and cross-cultural research on the development of children's understanding and actions regarding distributive justice.