A few years ago I covered a fascinating study looking at how early hierarchy and leadership emerged. It found that children as young as five were beginning to appreciate power and hierarchy in groups.
A more recent study, from the University of Illinois, builds on this and highlights again how good young children are at understanding leadership. The study reveals that children as young as 21-months can distinguish between power that is based upon respect, and power that’s based upon fear.
The researchers monitored the gaze of infants to understand their thinking, as obviously they are not able to explain themselves. The method relies on the fact that infants stare longer at things that confound their expectations.
“For example, infants will stare longer at scenarios where larger characters defer to smaller ones. They also take note when a character who normally wins a confrontation with another suddenly loses,” the researchers explain. “But little was known about infants’ ability to distinguish between different bases of power.”
Spotting leaders
The team developed a number of cartoon animations whereby various characters interacted with an individual who was characterized as either the leader of the group, a bully, or a likeable person with no power.
The animations were first shown to adults, who were all largely able to identify the characters as intended. The animations were then shown to infants, with their gaze monitored to gauge their reaction.
“In one experiment, the infants watched a scenario in which a character portrayed either as a leader or a bully gave an order (“Time for bed!”) to three protagonists, who initially obeyed,” the researchers explain. “The character then left the scene and the protagonists either continued to obey or disobeyed.”
As expected, the children were able to identify when the characters disobeyed the leader in the animation, but not to when they disobeyed the bully. The researchers wanted to test whether the infants were reacting to the likeability of the characters rather than their status, so they conducted an additional experiment.
“In general, when the leader left the scene, the infants expected the protagonists to continue to obey the leader,” they explain. “However, when the bully left, the infants had no particular expectation: The protagonists might continue to obey out of fear, or they might disobey because the bully was gone. The infants expected obedience only when the bully remained in the scene and could harm them again if they disobeyed.”
This didn’t happen when the likeable character left the room however, as the infants expected the characters to disobey them as they had no real power over them. The team believe their findings build on previous work that highlight how effective infants are at detecting power differentials between individuals.
“Our results also provide evidence that infants in the second year of life can already distinguish between leaders and bullies,” they conclude. “Infants understand that with leaders, you have to obey them even when they are not around; with bullies, though, you have to obey them only when they are around.”
