Toddlers prefer winners, but not when they win by force
Year: 2018
Type: preprint
Abstract: Social hierarchies occur across human societies, so all humans must navigate these relationships. Infants can detect when one individual outranks another. However, it is unknown whether they approach others based on social status. The current studies investigate whether toddlers prefer or avoid high-ranking individuals. Toddlers, ages 21 to 31 months, watched a zero-sum, right-of-way conflict between two puppets in which one puppet 'won' because the other deferred and yielded the way. Twenty out of twenty-three toddlers reached for the puppet that won. However, when one puppet used force and knocked the other puppet down in order to 'win', 18/22 toddlers reached for the puppet that ‘lost’. These results suggest that humans, from a very early age, not only recognize relative status but also incorporate it into their decisions about whether to approach or avoid others in a nuanced way that differs from our nearest primate relatives.
Authors: Ashley J. Thomas, Lotte Thomsen, Meline Abramyan, Angela Lukowski, Barbara W. Sarnecka
Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2902730673