Children Use Nonverbal Cues to Make Inferences About Social Power

Brey, Elizabeth; Shutts, Kristin

doi:10.1111/cdev.12334

Cited by 95 publications

(136 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Previous research in other areas has shown that girls are more able to use subtle social cues to make inferences about others" behavior (e.g., Brey & Shutts, 2015;Hall, 1978). Consistent with this idea, in the current study, girls…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…Furthermore, they are sensitive to subtle differences in other social cues (Brey & Shutts, 2015;Over & Carpenter, 2015), and are able to differentiate real from pretend emotions (Gross & Harris, 1988;Harris et al, 1986;Misailidi, 2006;Mizokawa, 2011). Furthermore, around this age, children are developing an understanding of the psychological states underlying others" behavior -their "theory of mind" (e.g., Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001).…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Young children discriminate genuine from fake smiles and expect people displaying genuine smiles to be more prosocial

Song

Over

Carpenter

2016

Evolution and Human Behavior

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young children discriminate genuine from fake smiles and expect people displaying genuine smiles to be more prosocial

Song

Over

Carpenter

2016

Evolution and Human Behavior

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“…This is in line with findings that effects typical for concrete magnitudes replicate for power as well (Chiao, 2010), and that already preverbal infants expect larger agents to prevail in zero-sum conflicts (Thomsen, Frankenhuis, Ingold-Smith, & Carey, 2011). Brey and Shutts (2015) observed that 5-year-old preschool children were sensitive to vertical spatial information inherent in postures when judging social power of people:…”

Section: Development Of the Space-power Associationsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…Furthermore, eye-movement studies (Mascaro & Csibra, 2012;Thomsen et al, 2011) showed that even infants were sensitive to the power of two agents; 4) Are children's spatial representations of power too different from that of adults? Again, the results from both Experiment 1 and Brey and Shutts (2015) showed that children had developed the same relation between power and space as adults (powerful = up, powerless = down). Instead, the null result seems to be related to the fact that children do not automatically activate the power concept or its related spatial representation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

The spatial representation of power in children

Schubert

2017

Cogn Process

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Previous evidence demonstrates that power is mentally represented as vertical space by adults. However, little is known about how power is mentally represented in children. The current research examines such representations. The influence of vertical information (motor cues) was tested in both an explicit power evaluation task (judge whether labels refer to powerless or powerful groups) and an incidental task (judge whether labels refer to people or animals). The results showed that when power was explicitly evaluated, vertical motor responses interfered with responding in children and adults, i.e., they responded to words representing powerful groups faster with the up than the down cursor key (and vice versa for powerless groups). However, this interference effect disappeared in the incidental task in children. The findings suggest that children have developed a spatial representation of power before they have been taught power-space associations formally, but that they do not judge power spontaneously.Keywords: children; power; space; representation 3 The Spatial Representation of Power in ChildrenAn essential question that has received much attention within the domain of cognitive psychology is how abstract concepts are mentally represented. In the social domain, one of these abstract concepts is power. Systematic research over the last decade has demonstrated representation of power as magnitude, specifically spatial magnitude (Chiao et al., 2009;Chiao, 2010;Giessner & Schubert, 2007; Jiang et al., 2015ab;Mason, Magee, & Fiske, 2014;Schubert, 2005;Zanolie et al., 2012).However, little is known about how power is mentally represented in children. The current research examines the spatial representation of power in children. Modal Representations of PowerIn the psychological literature, power has been defined as the ability or capacity to influence others through the control of resources (Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003;Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003). When we talk about power in our daily life, we often use vertical information in our language. For example, leaders who supervise their employees have "high" status, or are "up" in the hierarchy, whereas the employees are at the "lower" levels of the hierarchy. Simply put, power is often metaphorically understood, presented, and communicated nonverbally as vertical height in physical space: "control is up, lack of control is down" (Lakoff, 1987;Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Understanding the spatial representation of power is important because of its broad implications and use in communication in relations ranging from the interpersonal to societal. It concerns mate selection (Meier & Dionne, 2009) and leadership in organizations (Giessner & Schubert, 2007). For 4 example, Meier and Dionne found that males preferred female pictures which were presented near the bottom of the screen, whereas females preferred male pictures which were presented near the top of the screen, presumably because powerful males and powerless females are seen desirable in ...

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“…Additional children participated, but were excluded from analyses due to experimenter error ( N = 1) or not finishing the session ( N = 4). We predetermined a stopping rule of 32 participants per condition based on previous studies examining children’s understanding of nonverbal behaviors (Brey & Shutts, 2015). …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children use nonverbal cues from an adult to evaluate peers

Brey

Shutts

2018

Journal of Cognition and Development

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What factors contribute to children’s tendency to view individuals as having different traits and abilities? The present research tested whether young children are influenced by adults’ nonverbal behaviors when making inferences about peers. In Study 1, participants (5–6 years) viewed multiple videos of interactions between a ‘teacher’ and two ‘students;’ all individuals were unfamiliar to participants. In each clip, the students behaved similarly, but the teacher did not: She either smiled, nodded, touched, or shook her head at one student, and looked at the other student with a neutral expression. In Study 1, children tended to infer that students were smarter, nicer, and stronger if the teacher behaved more positively toward them. Study 2 pitted differences in the teacher’s behavior against differences in the students’ performance. When asked who was smarter, children selected lower-performing students who received more positive nonverbal cues from the teacher rather than higher-performing students who received less positive cues. The findings indicate that an authority figure’s nonverbal behaviors can influence children’s inferences about others, shedding light on one mechanism guiding young children’s evaluations of people in their social world.

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Children Use Nonverbal Cues to Make Inferences About Social Power

Cited by 95 publications

References 39 publications

Young children discriminate genuine from fake smiles and expect people displaying genuine smiles to be more prosocial

Young children discriminate genuine from fake smiles and expect people displaying genuine smiles to be more prosocial

The spatial representation of power in children

Children use nonverbal cues from an adult to evaluate peers

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