Poster #126 - Young Children and Adults Associate Social Power with Indifference to Others' Needs

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

As a cooperative species, humans generally expect others to be helpful. Although this expectation is often enforced by social norms, norms do not always apply equally to members of a social group. In particular, individuals with more or less social power may experience very different obligations governing their prosocial responses. On one hand, the powerful are sometimes expected to behave with exceptional beneficence toward those with lower status (i.e., noblesse oblige; Fiddick et al., 2007); on the other hand, the powerful are sometimes the recipients of exceptional care and assume the privilege of indifference toward others’ needs (Piff et al., 2010). Thus, how a person responds to another’s need may provide clues about their role in the broader social landscape, particularly whether or not they occupy a position of power. However, these inferences may be tied to specific contexts in complex ways.

As a first step in investigating the development of children’s intuitions about the contexts in which powerful people are prosocially responsive or unresponsive, we assessed their social attributions regarding people who do or do not respond to others’ instrumental needs. Four- to 7-year-old children (N=64) and adults (N=32) viewed two videos, featuring different actor pairs, in counterbalanced order. In both videos, one woman struggled to obtain an out-of-reach object. In the Helpful video, a second woman stood up and handed it to her. In the Unhelpful video, a second woman observed the first woman’s reach but did not help. After each video, participants answered two questions about the two actors in it: Which woman is “in charge”, and which one is “nicer”?

Whether or not the focal actor was prosocially responsive influenced participants’ attributions of relative authority, χ^2 = 12.03, p = .001. In the Helpful condition, neither children nor adults had consistent intuitions about who was in charge (both ps > .11); however, in the Unhelpful condition, both age groups viewed the unresponsive actor as in charge (46/64 children, p < .001; 28/32 adults, p < .001).

The focal actor’s prosocial responsiveness also influenced participants’ attributions of relative niceness, χ^2 = 33.06, p < .001. In the Helpful condition, children viewed the helpful actor as nicer (49/64 children, p < .001), though adults did not (21/32 adults, p = .110). In the Unhelpful condition, both age groups viewed the needy actor as nicer than the unresponsive one (54/64 children and 29/32 adults, both ps < .001).

These results reveal that both young children and adults use prosocial unresponsiveness—but not actual helpfulness—to infer social power. For the social context presented here, in which one actor experienced an instrumental need, our intuition that authority figures are less likely to help arises early and is stable across development. However, these inferences may be based on expectations about the frequency of behavior rather than asymmetric norms governing prosocial responsiveness. Because participants viewed the unresponsive actor as both powerful and less nice, it appears that the privilege of power did not fully excuse her unhelpfulness.

Authors

• Brandon Frank Terrizzi, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
  Presenting Author

• Amanda Mae Woodward, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jonathan S Beier, University of Maryland at College Park
  Non-Presenting Author