Developing Conceptions of Fair Contest Procedures and the Understanding of Skill and Luck Theresa A. Thorkildsen and Lisa White-McNulty University of Illinois at Chicago Contrary to assumptions about the aversive effects of competition on achievement motivation, in this study young people saw academic contests as fair. When 136 children and adolescents (ages 6 –14) completed structured interviews on fair ways to organize science contests and on the differentiation of skill and luck, age-related trends in their conceptions of procedural justice were parallel to their ability to differentiate skill and luck tasks. Differences in the use of contest-specific attributions such as credit allocation, odds of winning, and incentives were central to developing conceptions of procedural justice. Everyone made similar intrapersonal attributions to effort, mood, talent, and interest. Individual com- petition was judged to be more fair than team competition. Effectiveness was seen as necessary but not sufficient for establishing fairness. Personal harm was not central to developing conceptions of fair contests. Participation in contests has been portrayed as detrimental to young people’s continuing intellectual growth. Encouraging stu- dents to become preoccupied with outperforming others facilitates a degree of disengagement from learning (e.g., Ames, 1981; Nicholls, 1989). In addition, given the relative stability of the overall hierarchy of learners, contests may simply award privileges to the already privileged rather than offer opportunities for growth- enhancing social comparison (e.g., Nicholls, 1976). To measure young people’s understanding of the consequences of competition on achievement motivation, we explored their conceptions of procedural justice for skill and luck-based science contests and their ability to differentiate skill and luck tasks. We replicated previous findings on young people’s ability to differentiate skill and luck tasks and their beliefs that contests can be appropriate in educational settings. We also extended research on developing conceptions of procedural justice to include young people’s rea- soning about fair contest practices. Children as young as age 6 downplay the unpleasant conse- quences of competition on learning by discriminating among con- test, learning, and test situations when evaluating classroom prac- tices. They assert that competitive practices are fair for contests but not for learning or test situations (Thorkildsen, 1989b) and report high levels of enjoyment in competitive activities (e.g., Opie, 1993; Roberts, 1984). They also differentiate issues of fairness, effectiveness, and harm (Thorkildsen, 2000) and can see that competition diverts attention from the task at hand (e.g., Nicholls, Cobb, Wood, Yackel, & Patashnick, 1990; Thorkildsen, & Nicholls, 1998). Despite these common abilities, there are age- related differences in how young people construe moral and mo- tivational issues related to contests. Developing Conceptions Knowledge of age-related differences in children’s critiques of contest practices and their ability to differentiate skill and luck tasks offers an explanation for contradictory findings originating from the fields of moral development and achievement motivation. In studies of moral development, individuals’ semantic represen- tations seem to differ as a function of their definitions of particular situations. Conceptions of the fairness of educational practices (Thorkildsen, 2000), for example, differ from conceptions of virtue and character (e.g., Hartshorne, May, & Shuttleworth, 1930). In addition, individuals seem to raise different ethical concerns in the spheres of family, peers, school, and courts. Conduct issues seem to be most important in family and peer contexts (e.g., Walker, Hennig, & Krettenauer, 2000), whereas social justice issues seem central to reasoning about institutional settings (e.g., Thorkildsen, 2000). When young people reason about procedural justice in school, they coordinate moral and motivational concerns but differentiate questions of fairness, effectiveness, and harmfulness. Reasoning about procedural justice in a learning situation follows a trajectory similar to developing conceptions of intelligence (Thorkildsen, 1989a). Reasoning about procedural justice in a test situation follows the same trajectory as developing conceptions of ability and effort (Thorkildsen, 1991). Pilot studies of children’s reason- ing about fair contest practices suggest that the nature of the contest rules (e.g., those associated with skill or luck tasks) affects Theresa A. Thorkildsen, Department of Education and Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago; Lisa White-McNulty, De- partment of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago. This work was supported by the Center for Urban Educational Research and Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Depart- ment of Educational Psychology at the University of Washington. We thank Gudmundur Mar Gunnarsson; Gregor Kusche; Chris and Alex La- Londe; and Matt, Shawn, and Jassie Spencer for instructing Theresa A. Thorkildsen on why they like to play games. Teresa Cummings, Martha Dreuth-Fewell, Lourdes Kaplan, and Dana Welte provided valuable help with data collection and transcribing. We are grateful for the assistance of the students and staff of Walt Disney Magnet School and Gladstone Elementary School. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Theresa A. Thorkildsen, Education and Psychology, MC-147, 1040 West Harrison, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607-7133. E-mail: thork@uic.edu Journal of Educational Psychology Copyright 2002 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 2002, Vol. 94, No. 2, 316 –326 0022-0663/02/$5.00 DOI: 10.1037//0022-0663.94.2.316 316