The Development of a Scarcity Bias

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...