Being able to judge the fairness of a personal encounter and having an appr
eciation of the associated feelings are important components of prosocial d
evelopment. This study explored a common feature of everyday experience: un
fair reward and unfair punishment. Scenarios depicting 4 possible variants
of unfairness were read to children aged 9 to 11 years, who then made judgm
ents regarding the degree of unfairness and the nature and strength of the
feelings experienced by the characters. Our hypothesis that children with c
lassroom conduct problems would judge the non-receipt of a deserved reward
as worse than the receipt of an undeserved punishment was not confirmed. Th
is differentiation, however, did prove to be characteristic of boys in gene
ral, but not girls. Being asked to think of unfair things that had actually
happened did not appear to influence the children's responses to hypotheti
cal unfair situations, but did reveal that children experience and remember
a variety of unfair events in everyday family contexts. This study provide
s evidence that children actively monitor the receipt of social reward and
punishment according to their perception of fairness.