Infants' representation of social hierarchies in absence of physical dominance

Abstract

Social hierarchies are ubiquitous in all human relations since birth, but little is known about how they emerge during infancy. Previous studies have shown that infants can represent hierarchical relationships when they arise from the physical superiority of one agent over the other, but humans have the capacity to allocate social status in others through cues that not necessary entail agents’ physical formidability. Here we investigate infants’ capacity to recognize the social status of different agents when there are no observable cues of physical dominance. Our results evidence that a first presentation of the agents' social power when obtaining resources is enough to allow infants predict the outputs of their future. Nevertheless, this capacity arises later (at 18 month-olds but not at 15 month-olds) than showed in previous studies, probably due the increased complexity of the inferences needed to make the predictions.