New research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Trento finds that 21-month-old infants can distinguish between two broad types of social power: respect-based power exerted by a leader (who might be an authority figure with legitimate power, a prestigious individual with merited power, or some combination thereof) and fear-based power exerted by a bully.
Infants distinguish between respect-based and fear-based power relations. Image credit: Bill Kasman.
“Our results provide evidence that infants in the second year of life can already distinguish between leaders and bullies,” said University of Illinois Professor Renee Baillargeon.
“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.”
Professor Baillargeon and co-authors analyzed infants’ eye-gazing behavior, a standard approach for measuring expectations in children too young to explain their thinking to adults. This ‘violation-of-expectation’ method relies on the observation that infants stare longer at events that contradict their expectations.
“Previous studies had shown that infants can recognize power differences between two or more characters,” Professor Baillargeon said.
“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.”
“But little was known about infants’ ability to distinguish between different bases of power.”
To get at this question, the team developed a series of animations depicting cartoon characters interacting with an individual portrayed as a leader, a bully or a likeable person with no evident power.
The researchers first tested how adults responded to the scenarios and found that the adults identified the characters as intended.
Next, they measured the eye-gazing behavior of infants as they watched the same animations.
“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 character then left the scene and the protagonists either continued to obey or disobeyed,” Profesor Baillargeon said.
“The infants detected a violation when the protagonists disobeyed the leader but not when they disobeyed the bully. This was true also in a second experiment that repeated the scenarios but eliminated previous differences in physical appearance between the leader and the bully.”
A third experiment tested whether the infants were responding to the likeability of the characters in the scenarios, rather than to their status as leaders or bullies.
“In general, when the leader left the scene, the infants expected the protagonists to continue to obey the leader,” Professor Baillargeon said.
“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.”
“Finally, when the likeable character left, the infants expected the protagonists to disobey, most likely because the character held no power over them.”
The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Francesco Margoni et al. Infants distinguish between leaders and bullies. PNAS, published online September 2, 2018; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1801677115
