Caste and hierarchy: Children’s emerging belief that powerful groups can impose social roles

• In Event: 2-085 - Power, privilege, and position: How children use and reinforce social hierarchies

Integrative Statement

People occupy diverse social roles, ranging from soccer teams to racial castes. Many roles are socially constructed, i.e. are based in the community’s collective beliefs. Some roles are volitional, like being on a team, whereas others are often imposed, like being a member of a racial caste. In the former case, membership is based on mutual intentions (Noyes & Dunham, 2017). In the latter case, the role is often assigned as an exercise of power. For example, at various points in U.S. history, Whites passed legislation deciding who counted as White and who counted as “colored”. Sometimes powerful groups unilaterally decide who occupies a role. We explore if and when children are sensitive to this facet of power.

Study 1 (N = 90, ages 4-9) explores whether children are sensitive to power’s ability to assign roles. We depicted groups on a playground, varying whether there was a power hierarchy or not. In all cases, one group decides that an individual was in the opposite group. The individual always said they did not want to be. This produced three conditions: High, a high-power group decides an individual is in the low-power group; Low, a low-power group decides an individual is in the high-power group; Equal, a group decides an individual is in opposite group when the groups have equal power. We asked children whether the individual “was in the X group now”. If children think intentions must be mutual, they will be below chance in all conditions.

Instead we found a significant condition-age interaction, p<.001. 4-5-year-olds were below chance in all conditions, ps < .005, with no condition differences, ps>.70. 6-7-year-olds showed intermediate sensitivity; they were below chance in all conditions, ps<.05, but said the individual was in the group more often in the High condition, ps<.01. Finally, 8-9-year-olds showed robust sensitivity to power. They were below chance only in the Equal and Low conditions, ps<.001. They were at chance in the High condition, 60%, which was significantly higher than the other conditions, ps<.001.

In Study 2 (projected N=90, 4-9, plus 30 adults) we used a new test question to make the notion of social role clearer to participants: does the individual “count as an X on the playground now.” Adults understood power’s ability to impose roles; the High condition (79%) was higher than other conditions (17% and 9%, respectively, ps<.001, ds>1.20), and well above chance, p<.001, 95%CI: [.64:.94], d=.73. We are still collecting 4-5s. 6-7-year-olds (N=30) showed sensitivity to power, with responses in High, 57%, higher than Low, 26%, p<.001, and Equal, 29%, p=.005. The 8-9-year-olds (N=30) also showed sensitivity to power, with High, 53%, higher than Low, 14%, or Equal, 18%, p<.001.

An important element of hierarchies is that they are socially constructed, with positions in the hierarchy often imposed. Study 1-2 provided robust evidence that children become sensitive to power’s ability to assign roles by the end of the 2nd grade. Thus, elementary-school children showed sophistication in their reasoning about social hierarchy and its relationship to social construction.

Authors

• Alexander Noyes, Yale University
  Presenting Author

• Emily Gerdin, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yarrow Dunham, Yale
  Non-Presenting Author