We’re in an age where many prominent management thinkers are espousing either the removal of hierarchy in the workplace, or at least a reduction in it.  It’s a topic I’ve touched on a few times, not least because there is a degree of evidence suggesting that people quite like hierarchy.

For instance, a 2014 study found that people are fine with hierarchy so long as it’s deemed as being fair and just.

“Hierarchy can often be full of injustice,” the researchers say. “But for some tasks and goals, people are better able to do their job in that environment than in a more egalitarian setup.”

This was replicated in a classic study conducted by researchers at Stanford University.  It found that if you put college freshman into a room and task them with solving a challenge, it tends to take less than fifteen minutes to create a hierarchy among the team.

The authors suggest that this is a natural part of being human, with children as young as five also quick to establish a hierarchy among their peers.  Sometimes this hierarchy is scarcely even visible.

Natural hierarchy

This has been further emphasized by another study, which set out to explore children’s perceptions of hierarchy.  The study examined just when children begin to perceive and discern social power from the various cues given off in the way people interact.

Amazingly, it emerged that children as young as three were capable of picking up on these cues.  Perhaps more interesting however is what some of these cues are.  For instance, at this young age children were capable of using things such as resource control and permission given to determine who was in charge.  By the age of around 5, children can appreciate how the establishment of social norms can be used to determine power.  It isn’t until children are around 7 that actually giving orders is associated with power.

It suggests that social power is something that we can detect very early in life, with this study suggesting it begins as early as three years of age.  This appreciation of power then matures as we age.

Interestingly, the study found that children were fully capable of detecting power when it was used in both a malevolent and benevolent sense, suggesting quite a sophisticated nose for social power at such a young age.

“Children have an early-emerging and complex understanding of social power across various possible manifestations,” the authors note.

The researchers next plan to develop their thinking further and examine how life circumstances and experiences, and indeed the culture the child is raised in, affect their subsequent perceptions of power.