Humans and other social
animals interact regularly with conspecifics as part of affiliative groups.
Many of these interactions are cooperative, but many others involve competition
for resources. Competitive exchanges are often resolved on the basis of
dominance relationships, with higher-ranking individuals receiving priority
access to desired goods. Although no single cue can establish permanent
dominance relationships, there are some cues that predict dominance fairly
reliably across context. In the present study, we focused on two such cues
relevant to competing groups: (i) the physical sizes of individual members, and
(ii) their relative number.
Using a social competition task, we examined
whether, and how, preschool-aged children and adults used differences in
physical size and numerical alliances to judge which of two groups should
prevail in a competitive exchange for a desired object. These judgments were
made when either physical size or number differed between groups (Experiment
1), and when both were available but pitted against each other (Experiments 1
and 2). Our findings revealed that by 3 years of age, humans use multiple
perceptible cues in third-party judgments of dominance.
Our findings also
revealed that 3-year-olds, like adults, weighted these cues flexibly according
to the additional factor of overall group size, with the physical sizes of
individuals determining dominance in smaller groups (e.g., 2 vs. 4 characters)
and the relative number of individuals determining dominance in larger groups
(e.g., 15 vs. 30 characters).
Taken together, our findings suggest that a basic
formula for determining dominance in competitive exchanges, which weights
physical size of individuals and numerical alliances as a function of overall
group size, is available to young children and appears fairly stable through to
adulthood.
Below: Performance in the Conflict
condition for each age group in Experiment 1. Performance
is plotted by group size: small (2 vs. 4 characters) and large (5 vs. 10 characters).
As indicated in the main text, performance above 50% indicates that judgments
were based on the physical sizes of the characters (size preference), whereas
performance below 50% indicates that judgments were based on relative number
(number preference). The dotted line indicates chance; that is, when neither
physical size nor number was favored. Asterisks indicate significant
differences from chance. Error bars are ±1 SEM.
1Department of Psychology, Emory
University, Atlanta, GA, USA
2Department of Psychology, California State
University, San Bernardino, San Bernardino, CA, USA
Edited by: Emily Mather, University of Hull, UK
Reviewed by: Carmelo Mario Vicario, Bangor
University, UK; Victoria Simms, Ulster University, UK
