Preferring the Mighty to the Meek: Toddlers Prefer Novel Dominant Agents

Ashley J. Thomas, Meline Abramyam, Angela Lukowski, Lotte Thomsen, & Barbara W. Sarnecka

Introduction

*Hierarchical relationships: relationships where people are ranked along some linear dimension such as age, military rank, etc. (Fiske, 1999; 2006)

*Infants recognize social rank:*10-month-olds expect larger agents to win dominance contests(Thomsen, Frankenhuis, Ingold-Smith, & Carey, 2011)

*6-month-olds expect agents from larger groups to win dominance contests. (Pun, Birch, & Baron, 2016)

*15-month-olds expect rank to be stable across situations (Mascaro & Csibra, 2012)

*But, who do toddlers like better? dominant agents, subordinate agents or neither?

Discussion

*Toddlers prefer dominant to subordinate individuals, and this preference depends on a zero-sum interaction where one agent reaches its goal and the other does not.

*Maybe, toddlers want to a�liate with dominant individuals for more access to resources, knoweledge etc. (See Silk, 1999 for similar behavior in macaques) OR...

*Maybe they seek to form relationships with high-ranking individuals expecting leadership, protection or guidance etc (see Fiske & Rai, 2014)

*Next question: What about younger infants?

Participants*Experiment 1: Twenty-two (N=22) 21-31 month-olds were tested. Mean age=24.95 months. 13 boys

*Experiment 2: Twenty-one (N=21) 21-31 month-olds were tested. Mean age=26.24 months. 14 boys

*Experiment 3: Twenty-seven (N=27) 21-31 month-olds were tested. Mean age=25.10. 13 boys

Acknowledgements:Thanks to UROP and Pretend City!

References: Boehm, C. (1999). Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Harvard University Press.Bond, A. B., Wei, C. A., & Kamil, A. C. (2010). Cognitive representation in transitive inference: A comparison of four corvid species. Behavioural Processes, 85(3), 283–292. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2010.08.003Fiske, A. P. (1992). The four elementary forms of sociality: framework for a uni�ed theory of social relations. Psycho-logical Review, 99(4), 689–723. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1454904Fiske, A. P., & Rai, T. S. (2014). Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Rela-tionships. Cambridge University Press.Grosenick, L., Clement, T. S., & Fernald, R. D. (2007). Fish can infer social rank by observation alone. Nature, 445(7126), 429–432. http://doi.org/10.1038/nature05646Magee, J. C., & Galinsky, A. D. (2008). 8 Social Hierarchy: The Self‐Reinforcing Nature of Power and Status. The Academy of Management Annals, 2(1), 351–398. http://doi.org/10.1080/19416520802211628Mascaro, O., & Csibra, G. (2012). Representation of stable social dominance relations by human infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 6862–6867. http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1113194109Pun, A., Birch, S. A. J., & Baron, A. S. (2016). Infants use relative numerical group size to infer social dominance. Pro-ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1–6. http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1514879113Sapolsky, R. (2004). Social status and health in humans and other animals. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 393–418. http://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.144000Thomsen, L., Frankenhuis, W. E., Ingold-Smith, M., & Carey, S. (2011). Big and mighty: Preverbal infants mentally rep-resent social dominance. Science, 331(6016), 26–29. http://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199198.Big

Results

Liked Low-RankingLiked High-Ranking0

5

10

15

20N=22

N=18

N=4

***two-sided binomial test, p<.005, Bayes Factor of 24.95, the data is 25 times more likely given the alternative that the children were not choosing 50% of the time.

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Experiment 1 Puppet Show

Which one do you like?

ProcedureExperiment 1

But maybe toddlers in experiment 1 preferred the puppet that: (1) reached its goal (i.e. crossed stage) (2) remained visible the whole time (3)moved last (4) moved farther (5) Did not ‘bow’

Experiment 2

Experiment 2 Puppet Show ^two-sided binomial test, p=1.0. Bayes Factor of 3.86, the data is ~4 times

more likely given the null over the alternative.

N=11N=10

Liked Non-Goal AttainerLiked Goal-Attainer0

5

10

15

20

N=21

^two-sided binomial test, p=.44 Bayes Factor of 2.89, the data is ~3 times more likely given the hypothesis that the children were choosing at chance.

N=12

N=15

Liked Bowing PuppetLiked Non-Bowing Puppet0

5

10

15

20

N=27

Num

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Experiment 3But does the preference depend on a zero-sum interaction?

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Experiment 3 Puppet Show