Abstract: Individuals can gain high social rank through dominance (based on coercion and fear) and prestige (based on merit and admiration). We conducted a cross-cultural developmental study and tested 5- to 12-year-olds, and adults in the UK and China, aiming to determine (a) the age at which children distinguish dominance and prestige, and (b) the influence of cultural values on rank-related reasoning. We specifically tested participants in China because of the value of prestigious individuals modestly yielding to subordinates, a social skill that becomes more salient with age. In both populations, the distinction between dominance and prestige emerged at five years, and improved over childhood. When reasoning about a resource conflict between a high-ranking party and a subordinate, adults in both countries expected high-rank individuals to win, although Chinese adults were less likely to do so regarding prestigious individuals. Across the two countries, younger children (5–7 years) responded similarly to each other, not favoring either party as the winner. Older children (9–12 years), however, diverged. Those in the UK chose the high-rank party, while those in China made no systematic inference. Overall, our findings suggest that while children distinguish prestige and dominance comparably in the two countries, they develop culturally-influenced expectations about the behavior of high-rank individuals.
5. General discussion
Our
aims were to test: (1) the age at which children differentiate
dominance and prestige; and (2) the influence of cultural ideas of
hierarchy and conflict on expectations about the behaviors of dominant
and prestigious individuals. The experiments yielded several key
findings for both lines of inquiry.
- (1) Developmental trajectory
First,
5- to 12-year-olds in both the UK and China easily identified dominant
and prestigious characters as high-ranking. Thus, even for the younger
group of children (5–7 years), cues to prestige (e.g. asking for advice,
following said advice) were enough to merit inferences about rank. In
fact, children were just as successful at recognizing that the
prestigious character was higher-ranking as they were for the dominant
character. Next, even younger children distinguished between prestigious
and dominant characters in a third-party situation, choosing the
prestigious character significantly more when asked whom the subordinate
would approach or like, than when asked whom she feared. This finding
is particularly interesting in light of the fact that children do not
shun coercive (or dominance-like) strategies in their peer groups until
eight years (Hawley, 1999).
Since our younger group was younger than eight years, the finding
suggests that shunning coercive strategies is not the result of noticing
the difference between dominant and prestigious strategies.
Nonetheless, the ability to distinguish dominance and prestige improved
with age. Finally, there were no differences between responses in the UK
and China, providing some of the first empirical evidence of children
from non-Euro-American cultures understanding cues to rank similarly to
children in Europe and the US. In summary, children attributed a
combination of traits to the characters that are reflective of a
conceptual distinction between dominance and prestige, viewing both as
having high social rank, but differing in prestigious characters being
liked and approached versus dominant individuals being feared and
avoided.
One alternative explanation of the findings
from Experiment 1 is that children did not actually distinguish
dominance from prestige, and instead succeeded in the task by answering
the questions (age, liking, approach, fear) piecemeal. In other words,
maybe they answered that Dimo would like and approach the prestigious
character simply because the character seemed nice and friendly, and
feared and avoided the dominant character because that one seemed mean
and aggressive. Similarly, children could have inferred age (i.e. rank)
by drawing on cues like being imitated. We do not dispute that these
cues led children to answer the questions correctly. In fact, we claim
that this is exactly what the understanding of prestige and dominance
looks like: an understanding of this combination of features.
None of these individual features differentiates between dominance and
prestige, but one person having high status while being nice and
approachable differentiates this person from a similarly high-ranking
individual who is mean and aggressive.
Although younger
children recognized the rank difference between the characters just as
easily as older children (Experiment 1), they did not infer that
higher-ranking parties would win resource conflicts (Experiment 3). This
failure cannot be attributed to a cultural effect, as children in the
UK and China performed similarly. When asked to justify their choice of
who would win the conflict, almost no children referenced rank in their
explanations, confirming that their failure to infer is a real
consequence of how they construed the scene. Thus, although younger
children extracted rank from watching interactions between characters in
Experiment 1, they were unable to automatically incorporate them into
inferences about subsequent behaviors in Experiment 3. Future work
should explore this finding further.
- (2) Cross-cultural differences
A
key contribution from our studies is evidence for the influence of
cultural norms and value systems on how children and adults understand
social hierarchies and reason about them. Adults in the UK and China
were similar in that they both inferred that high-ranking characters
would win against a subordinate. They did differ, however, in the degree
to which they made this inference in the prestige case. Chinese adults
were less likely than British adults to think that the prestigious
person would win the resource. This difference, while subtle, is a key
sign of the cultural difference reflecting the value specifically placed
on yielding to others when in a position of prestige (Kajanus, n.d.).
The cultural difference also manifested in older children (9–12 years),
but in a different way. Older children in the UK inferred that the
high-ranking party would win the conflict, regardless of whether the
character was prestigious or dominant. In contrast, older children in
China responded similarly to younger children in both countries,
demonstrating no systematic prediction about who would win in either of
the conflict cases. But unlike younger children's explanations, which
were shallow and unrelated to social rank, older children in China and
the UK provided similar levels of rank-relevant explanations (around
65%). Consequently, the lack of systematic inferences was age-driven in
younger children, but culturally influenced in older children in China.
Moreover, older children in China who thought the subordinate would win
the conflict were more likely to mention the prestigious character
yielding than the dominant character yielding. This finding aligns with
the value of yielding by prestigious individuals. Together, these
findings suggest that the difference between older children in China and
the UK is rooted in a cultural difference.
On the
topic of Chinese participants' choices, two points merit further
discussion. With regard to adults, the fact that Chinese participants
thought that both dominant and prestigious parties would win the
conflict gives room for pause, given the value of prestigious
individuals showing restraint and giving up resources to lower-status
parties. However, it is important to note that yielding to those in
lower positions is a sophisticated social skill highly dependent on the
nuances of the situation, such as the dynamics of ascribed status
hierarchies and the importance of the issue at the root of the conflict (Kajanus, n.d.).
Thus, most adults may have viewed the situation as one in which the
high-ranking character lacked the sophistication to yield, given the
cartoonish appearance of the characters, the simplicity of the
exchanges, and the prestigious character's unabashed and juvenile desire
for the resource. This may have made the high-ranking character's win
the more straightforward choice. A number of them may have, nonetheless,
considered the situation in terms of the prestigious character
yielding, thereby bringing about the difference with the British adults.
Another
puzzling finding has to do with the older Chinese children's responses
in Experiment 3. In a reverse situation from the adults, children held
no expectation of either party winning in either conflict case. The lack
of a clear prediction may be understandable for the prestige case, but
is more surprising in the dominance case. As the data do not clarify the
reason for this result, we can only speculate. One likely account is
that children at this age are not yet fully proficient in the
complexities of rank relations and the rules of yielding. They have
learned that high-ranking persons will sometimes yield, but the ways in
which personality characteristics (e.g. prestige, dominance) and
ascribed hierarchies (position, age, gender, etc.) factor into yielding
are still unclear. It is therefore possible that even though they
distinguish between dominant and prestigious processes, in relation to
yielding they simply treat them similarly as signs of high rank. It is
notable that even adults of both countries treated the prestige and
dominance cases the same in their predictions about yielding. This does
not mean that they cannot distinguish between prestige and dominance as
bases of high rank. Unlike Experiment 1, which specifically tested this
ability, Experiments 2 and 3 were focused on predictions about yielding
in a conflict between high-ranking and low-ranking character. Even so,
Chinese adults were less likely to choose the prestigious character as
the winner than the UK adults. Older children also showed signs of
making the distinction in relation to yielding, as they were more likely
to mention the higher-ranking character yielding in the prestige scene
than in the dominance scene.
One limitation of the present studies was the sample size (n = 40 per age, country), which although on par with previous work on children's reasoning about social rank (e.g. Charafeddine et al., 2015, Charafeddine et al., 2016),
was not very large. Although a larger sample would have been more
beneficial, the number of children in the schools we had access to
logistically limited us. We hope to remedy this in our future work.
Relying on large amounts of ethnographic evidence, Fiske (1992)
laid out a theory of four elementary forms of social relationships in
human societies, one of which is authority ranking, which corresponds to
hierarchical relationships marked by rank differences. Even though the
relational model of authority ranking might be universal, it can be
implemented in myriad ways. Children may be endowed with an innate
knowledge of the model of hierarchical relationships (Thomsen & Carey, 2013),
but they must learn its details and exactly how it operates in their
particular social milieu. These experiments provide evidence for one
such culturally-influenced aspect of hierarchical relationships across
two cultural backdrops. The range of cultural features and cues to
relationships is underexplored, as is how children come to learn them
and how long it takes them to do so. We offer an initial glimpse of one
particular aspect and hope that future work will go on to uncover many
more.
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