Children Hold Leaders Primarily Responsible, Not Entitled

Abstract

Do children construe leaders as individuals whose position of power entails primarily more responsibility or more entitlement, compared with nonleaders? To address this question, 5‐year‐old children (n = 128) heard a story involving a hierarchical dyad (a leader and a nonleader) and an egalitarian dyad (two nonleaders), and then assessed protagonists’ relative contributions to a collaborative endeavor (Experiments 1 and 2) or relative withdrawals from a common resource pool earned jointly (Experiment 3). Children expected a leader to contribute more toward a joint goal than its nonleader partner, and to withdraw an equal share (not more) from a common pool. Children thus gave evidence that they construed leaders as more responsible, rather than more entitled, relative to nonleaders.

Political Ideology in Early Childhood: Making the Case for Studying Young Children in Political Psychology

“…Similarly, toddlers expect obedience to a “leader” (a group member whom others defer to) even when the leader is not physically present; in contrast, toddlers expect obedience to a “bully” (a group member whom others fear) only in their presence (Margoni et al, 2018). Toddlers also expect authority figures to protect group members and correct transgressions within the group (Stavans & Baillargeon, 2019) and to have a greater responsibility to contribute to the group than nonleaders (Stavans & Diesendruck, 2021). Children further perceive different people as having authority in different contexts and domains (e.g., Laupa et al, 1995; Smetana et al, 2014; Yau et al, 2009), speaking to the flexibility and sophistication of their early reasoning about authority.…”

Building representations of the social world: Children extract patterns from social choices to reason about multi‐group hierarchies

“…One possibility is that children's differential responses reflected variation in how children conceptualized the roles "leader," "helper," and their relation to one another. Indeed, recent research underscores a potential duality in children's thinking about the relation between leading and helping: On the one hand, children view helping others as an important aspect of leadership (Stavans & Diesendruck, 2021), but on the other hand, children associate being helpful with not being "in charge" (Terrizzi et al, 2020). Another possibility is that some children-specifically those who said that Group-D was the "leader" and that Group-A was the "helper"-were attempting to rectify the biased pattern of choices they observed (e.g., see Elenbaas et al, 2016;Olson et al, 2011;Rizzo et al, 2020; for a review, see Heck et al, 2022b), particularly given that this response was more common among older (vs. younger) children (79% of children providing this response were age 8 or older).…”

The influence of social status on children's merit‐based resource allocation: The potential explanation of expectation

“…While young children (3–4 years of age) tend to show a preference for dominant individuals (Roseth et al, 2007), from 5 years of age onward children show a more nuanced appreciation for the social dominance, and dislike individuals who obtain dominance through coercion (Dodge et al, 1990; Hawley, 1999). On the other hand, children also believe that people who possess greater power such as leaders should contribute more for to their groups (Stavans & Diesendruck, 2021). Thus, although children can form social preferences based on relational status, it remains an open question whether children are more likely to attribute merit to high‐status individuals in this domain.…”