Preschoolers’ social preferences in a social dominance context

International audience; AbstractNavigating the social world requires evaluating how others behave, communicate and feel. Children show signs of social evaluation from an early age by preferring those who are familiar, those who are similar to themselves as well as those displaying moral behaviour. In the current study, we investigate whether another key dimension of the social environment-social dominance-influences preschool-ers preferences. Research shows that preschoolers understand such relations and use them to make social inferences. Less is known about their preferences towards dominant and subordinate individuals. We carried out two experiments. Experiment 1 presented 4-and 5-year-old children with a dominance scenario in which one dominant character twice imposed his/her will on a subordinate. The results showed that the children did not reveal a preference for one character over the other. In Experiment 2, 3-to 5-year-old children were presented with more explicit dominance interactions involving puppets in a decision power scenario (similar to Experiment 1's) and in a play-fight scenario. In the decision power situation, only the 3-year-olds revealed a preference for the dominant; also, boys were more likely to prefer the dominant than girls. In the play-fight scenario a slight preference emerges for the puppet that prevailed in the fight.