Children Hold Elected Leaders Responsible, not Entitled

• In Event: 2-195 - New Directions in the Study of Children’s Concepts of Leadership

Integrative Statement

Young children are sensitive to hierarchical social relations, identify “leaders” and “non-leaders” based on a variety of behavioral and physical cues (Charafeddine et al, 2015; Gülgöz & Gelman, 2017), and favor leaders over non-leaders (Bernard et al., 2016; Charafeddine et al., 2016). Much of this research has focused on competitive interactions, in which a leader prevails and obtains benefits at the expense of a non-leader. It is unclear, however, whether children generally conceptualize leaders as individuals with more entitlements or responsibilities toward their group, relative to non-leaders. We explore this question in a context of third-party collaboration, in which protagonists could contribute equally, less (entitlement), or more (responsibility) than others.

In Study 1, 5-year-old children (N = 48) heard a story about a group of protagonists who elect their leader and follow this leader into an amusement park. Participants were told that each ride requires two protagonists, and that to activate a ride, protagonists must put sufficient coins into the ride’s ‘piggy-bank’ box. We probed the relative contributions of protagonists to a joint goal as an index of entitlement or responsibility. Children were presented with two protagonists at a time (a leader and a subordinate, or two subordinates, order counterbalanced) and their respective coins. Children (1) anticipated how many coins each protagonist would contribute to activate the ride (both had sufficient coins to activate the ride individually), and (2) judged the acceptability of two ‘actual’ contributions (small or large, order counterbalanced). We found that children anticipated a leader would contribute significantly more than its subordinate partner, and viewed it as significantly less acceptable when a leader made a small as opposed to a large contribution. No such differences were observed when protagonists were two subordinates and thus “equals”: Children anticipated equal contribution and viewed any deviation (small or large contribution) as equally unacceptable. Thus, children attributed increased responsibility differentially to leaders and non-leaders. It was unclear precisely what features that the leader had (conferred status and decision power over others) and non-leaders lacked, might have contributed to attribution of responsibility.

In Study 2, 5-year-old children (N = 48) were presented with a similar story, except that we manipulated whether a leader (who was conferred its status) had decision power or not, and we added decision power to a non-leader over another non-leader (both lacked conferred status). Children anticipated a leader would contribute significantly more than its subordinate partner, and viewed it as significantly less acceptable when a leader made a small as opposed to a large contribution, regardless of whether the leader had decision power or not over others. Under some circumstances, children showed a similar pattern when a non-leader had decision power over another non-leader.

Together, our findings suggest that 5-year-old children view leaders as having more responsibility (rather than entitlement), relative to other group members, at least in a context of collaboration. Moreover, this increased responsibility was likely rooted in the status being conferred by a group and to a lesser extent in having decision power over others.

Authors

• Maayan Stavans, Bar-Ilan University
  Presenting Author

• Gil Diesendruck, Bar-Ilan University
  Non-Presenting Author