Prestige and dominance in egalitarian and hierarchical societies: Children in Finland favor prestige more than children in Colombia or the USA

Abstract

We examined how children reason about dominance and prestige in Colombia, Finland, and the USA, contexts that vary in terms of societal inequality and hierarchical organization. We tested 496 children aged 4–11 years old to determine whether they: i) recognized and discriminated between dominance and prestige, ii) preferred to learn from a dominant or prestigious character, iii) assigned leadership to a dominant or prestigious character, and iv) self-identified more with a dominant or subordinate character. Older children were more likely to recognize, prefer, learn from, and assign leadership to the prestigious character, and to identify with the subordinate. There were no cross-cultural differences in learning preferences, supporting evolutionary theories that posit a universal bias towards social learning from prestigious individuals. There was variation in leadership preferences; children were the most likely to assign leadership to a prestigious character in more egalitarian Finland, and least likely in more unequal Colombia. We argue that societal factors including levels of inequality and hierarchical social organization shape an underlying propensity for children to learn to reason about rank and to broadly favor prestige in leaders and models for learning from.