Two white adults divided the toys, one equally and the other unequally.
Seventy per cent of the toddlers chose to play with the researcher who distributed the toys fairly.
But in a second test, when one researcher favoured a white recipient over an Asian one, they picked the ‘fair’ researcher less often, the journal Frontiers in Psychology reports.
And the babies are more likely to help those who share the same ethnicity, which is known as in-group bias when people favour those with the same characteristics as oneself.
The researchers say this implies that babies can take into account both race and social history when deciding which person would make a better playmate.
The study revealed when it came to picking a playmate, the babies seemed more tolerant of unfairness when the white recipient benefited from it.
Professor Jessica Sommerville of the University of Washington said: ‘If all babies care about is fairness, then they would always pick the fair distributor, but we’re also seeing that they’re interested in consequences for their own group members.’
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