Peer persuasion: a study of children's dominance strategies

Williams, David E.; Schaller, Kristi A.

doi:10.1080/0300443930880104

Cited by 19 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In addition to physical supremacy, age and the ability to impose one's decisions were successfully taken into account to attribute dominance. This result is in line with the human ethological literature that suggests the great significance of these cues in preschool age hierarchies (La Montagner, Restoin, Rodriguez, & Kontar, 1988;Williams & Schaller, 1993). It should be noted that these three cues are statistically independent from each other since identifying the dominant on the basis of one cue does not allow predicting that the dominant will be identified on the basis of the other cues.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…When observing two individuals interacting in antagonistic ways, preschoolers made dominance judgments not only based on physical superiority but also on verbal interactions (Experiment 1). This fits well with the evidence that dominance relationships among preschoolers are primarily verbally expressed and consist in influencing others' actions in games and group activities (Williams & Schaller, 1993). In addition, the results from the preliminary identification questions in Experiments 3 and 4…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

See 1 more Smart Citation

How Preschoolers Use Cues of Dominance to Make Sense of Their Social Environment

Charafeddine

Mercier

Clément

et al. 2014

Journal of Cognition and Development

112

139

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

How Preschoolers Use Cues of Dominance to Make Sense of Their Social Environment

Charafeddine

Mercier

Clément

et al. 2014

Journal of Cognition and Development

112

139

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Even very young children try to control others through language. In naturalistic studies of children's attempts to exert dominance over peers, Williams and Schaller (1993) reported that the most frequently employed domineering tactic of four‐ and five‐year‐olds was verbal assertion, accounting for 72 percent of dominance behavior, with physical assertiveness accounting for only 12 percent. Two‐year‐olds sometimes employ factual (including false) statements to persuade family members (Newton, Reddy, & Bull, 2000; Reddy, 2007; Wilson, Smith, & Ross, 2003) and even one‐year‐olds will contradict factual claims (Hummer, Wimmer, & Antes, 1993; Pea, 1982).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young Children's Persuasion in Everyday Conversation: Tactics and Attunement to Others' Mental States

2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Young children's persuasion tactics, and how these reflected attunement to others' mental states, were explored in archived longitudinal samples of transcribed at-home conversations of four children, three to five years old. Over 87,000 utterances were examined to identify conversation 'chunks' involving persuasion; 1,307 chunks were then coded for who initiated the persuasion, the persuader's goal, tactics employed, the presence of cues about others' beliefs and desires, and whether children attended to such information. Analyses suggested that persuasion exchanges were initiated similarly by children and adults, were stable in frequency and length across time, and involved a limited set of persuasion tactics. Children's attempts to change beliefs increased although explicit mental-state cues were only rarely available. When such cues were available, children more often than not altered their tactics. Implications for our understanding of children's developing social cognition and theory of mind, as well as the limitations of conversational analysis, are discussed.

show abstract

“…For example, educational settings are rife with examples of children who coerce others to meet their social and material desires (e.g., Boulton, 1996;Olweus, 1993). In contrast, other children are adept at getting others to go along with them willingly (Edwards, 1984;French, Waas, Stright, & Baker, 1986;Kalma, Visser, & Peters, 1993;Williams & Schaller, 1993). Additionally, Charlesworth and his colleagues have shown that children who are willing or able to combine other-oriented strategies (e.g., helping) with competitive strategies (e.g., commanding, misleading) appear to gain greater access to attractive commodities such as film viewing (Charlesworth, 1988;LaFreniere & Charlesworth, 1987;Charlesworth & LaFreniere, 1983; see also facilitative adopted by developmentalists and sociobiologists.…”

Section: A Strategy-based Approach To Social Dominancementioning

confidence: 99%

The Ontogenesis of Social Dominance: A Strategy-Based Evolutionary Perspective

Hawley

1999

Developmental Review

671

764

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social dominance results when members of a social group vary in their ability to acquire resources in the presence of others (i.e., compete). Traditional approaches to social dominance often emphasize coercive behavior, but nonetheless suggest that dominant individuals are socially central (e.g., watched, attractive social partners). These patterns, however, apply to humans only up to a certain age. This apparent discontinuity may give the false impression that social dominance is less relevant to human social organization than it is to animal social organization. This paper reintroduces the ethological concept of social dominance, but reinterprets it from a strategy-based perspective. That is, if social dominance is defined as differential ability to control resources-without reference to how this is done-then children evidently employ different strategies to compete with peers (e.g., coercive and prosocial). Furthermore, the type of strategy children employ and peers' responses to it depend largely on the ages of the children. By adopting a strategy-based approach to social dominance and explicitly incorporating developmental processes and uniquely human capacities, human social dominance patterns appear to be more similar to primate patterns than commonly believed. Implications for social competence, peer relationships, and the development of the self are discussed. © 1999 Academic PressSurvival, growth, and development oblige resource acquisition (Ricklefs, 1979), and resource acquisition compels competition (Darwin, 1859). The role that this principle plays in the lives of nonhuman species is virtually unquestioned. The issue is less clear for humans, however, largely because competition ranges from the trivial (e.g., the last chocolate donut) to the crucial (e.g., the last liter of potable water) and because humans claim to hold equity in high esteem. Yet for any species, individuals are not all equally able to procure the necessities (or niceties) of life. The natural asymmetries

show abstract

Peer persuasion: a study of children's dominance strategies

Cited by 19 publications

References 17 publications

How Preschoolers Use Cues of Dominance to Make Sense of Their Social Environment

How Preschoolers Use Cues of Dominance to Make Sense of Their Social Environment

Young Children's Persuasion in Everyday Conversation: Tactics and Attunement to Others' Mental States

The Ontogenesis of Social Dominance: A Strategy-Based Evolutionary Perspective

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About