The Many Faces of Social Power: Children's Reasoning About Respect-, Dominance-, and Institution-based Control

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Power asymmetries are ubiquitous in society, as across most cultures there is a fundamental grammar and a shared structure of social hierarchies (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Children typically possess little authority; nevertheless, early interactions with parents and teachers impact children’s proto-political views, such as their orientation toward authority and conventionality (Hussak & Cimpian, 2018; Reifen et al., 2014). More broadly, because children grow up in societies where power dynamics are present in family, peer, and organizational contexts, to navigate their social world children must learn to reason about authority and hierarchical systems (Gülgöz & Gelman, 2017).

Here, three papers examine American and Norwegian children’s reasoning about individuals who are or aspire to be in control, using a diverse set of experimental paradigms and age ranges. Paper 1 illustrates how by 21 months of age, Norwegian infants use bowing as a cue for inferring respect-based power, expecting agents to obey characters to whom others have bowed. Paper 2 shows that 3- to 6-year-old American children are attentive to whether a situation involves cooperation or competition, to decide whether to put in charge a dominant or prestigious candidate. Paper 3 demonstrates that by age 9, children take into account whether or not someone has been entrusted with a role of authority, when evaluating self-serving behaviors. Together, these findings document multiple developmental milestones that meaningfully extend our understanding of the ontogeny of humans’ grasp of power dynamics. A discussant with expertise in social cognition will synthesize and further situate these papers' findings.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Boli Reyes-Jaquez, University of New Hampshire

Discussant

• Andrei Cimpian, New York University

Individual Presentations

• What Cues do Infants use to Represent Legitimate Leadership? - Presenting Author: Francesco Margoni, Universitetet i Oslo; Lotte Thomsen, University of Oslo, Aarhus University

• Children’s Preferences for Dominant vs. Prestigious Leaders: Variation Across Contexts and Individuals - Presenting Author: Isobel A Heck, University of Chicago; Jesús Bas, Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Katherine D. Kinzler, University of Chicago

• Children’s Judgments of Three Forms of Authority Misuse - Presenting Author: Boli Reyes-Jaquez, University of New Hampshire; Melissa A. Koenig, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities