Children Expect Leaders to Oust Intruders, Refrain From Unprovoked Aggression, but Not to Be Generally Prosocial

Humans in every society encounter social hierarchies. Previous research has shown that children use various cues to say who is, "in charge". In the present studies we ask how children think those who are in charge treat others. In Studies 1 and 2, children heard stories and saw drawings of social groups where one character wore a crown and sat on a throne (Study 1) or just wore a crown (Study 2) and three other characters stood alongside with no special clothing or markings. The children were told about an action, and then had to guess who had done it. When asked who pushed someone down, most 6- to 8-year-old children guessed that one of the uncrowned characters had done the pushing, while 3- to 5-year-old children seemed to consider the crowned and uncrowned characters equally likely to push someone. When asked who kicked out a hostile intruder, children of all ages chose the crowned character more often than an uncrowned character. Study 3 asked whether children expect crowned characters to put themselves in harm's way to protect uncrowned characters and whether they expect crowned characters to be actively prosocial. Here, neither the older nor the younger children expected the crowned characters to put themselves in harm's way to protect the others, and they thought the crowned character was less likely than others to perform prosocial actions such as helping someone up or sharing a cookie. These data suggest that children expect leaders, at least in this context, to provide specific benefits such as expelling hostile intruders, but not to be more prosocial than other people overall. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that children use inferences about social roles to predict people's behavior.