A study found that infants are able to distinguish between leaders and bullies. The results of this study build upon prior research that indicates that infants can represent power asymmetries and expect them to both endure over time and extend across situations.
The researchers in the study were from the University of Illinois, Champaign. They examined whether 21-month-old infants could distinguish between two different bases of social power. To do this, the researchers analyzed the eye-gazing behavior of the infants. This is a standard approach for measuring expectations in children too young to verbally explain their thinking to adults.
The researchers presented the infants with cartoon characters. One type of character was a leader. The leader might be an authority figure with legitimate power, a prestigious individual with merited power, or some combination. Another type of character was a bully. The bully had fear-based power. The power character gave an order to two other characters – referred to as the protagonists.
At first, the protagonists obeyed the order (no matter if it was the leader or the bully who gave it). Next, the power character left the scene.The protagonists could either continue obeying, or could begin to disobey.
When the leader gave the order, the infants looked significantly longer at the disobeying protagonist than they did at the obeying protagonist. The researchers noted that this was because the infants expected the protagonists to continue obeying even after the leader was gone.
When the bully gave the order, and then left, the infants looked at the obeying and disobeying protagonists equally. The researchers concluded that this meant the infants thought that either outcome could happen.
The infants interpreted the protagonist’s obeying the bully as a way to prevent the bully from harming them. When the bully was gone, the infants expected the protagonist to disobey, because the bully’s power weakened when absent.
The results of the study are interesting because it indicates that babies as young as 21-months can tell the difference between a leader and a bully. It’s remarkable that infants so young can identify that bullies lose their power when they aren’t physically present.
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