Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Nat Hum Behav. 2018 Sep;2(9):662-669. doi: 10.1038/s41562-018-0415-3. Epub 2018 Sep 7.
Social hierarchies occur across human societies, so all humans must navigate them. Infants can detect when one individual outranks another, but it is unknown whether they approach others based on their social status. This paper presents a series of seven experiments investigating whether toddlers prefer high- or low-ranking individuals. Toddlers aged 21-31 months watched a zero-sum, right-of-way conflict between two puppets, in which one puppet 'won' because the other yielded the way. Of the 23 toddlers who participated, 20 reached for the puppet that 'won'. However, when one puppet used force and knocked the other puppet down in order to win, 18 out of 22 toddlers reached for the puppet that 'lost'. Five follow-up experiments ruled out alternative explanations for these results. The findings suggest that humans, from a very early age, not only recognize relative status but also incorporate status into their decisions about whether to approach or avoid others, in a way that differs from our nearest primate relatives.
社会层级存在于人类社会中，因此所有人都必须应对它们。婴儿能够察觉到一个人的地位高于另一个人，但尚不清楚他们是否会根据他人的社会地位来接近他人。本文介绍了一系列七个实验，旨在研究幼儿是否更喜欢地位高或低的个体。21-31 个月大的幼儿观看了两个木偶之间的零和、通行权冲突，其中一个木偶“获胜”是因为另一个木偶让步了。在参与的 23 名幼儿中，有 20 名幼儿伸向了“获胜”的木偶。然而，当一个木偶使用武力将另一个木偶撞倒以取得胜利时，22 名幼儿中有 18 名幼儿伸向了“输”的木偶。五项后续实验排除了对这些结果的其他解释。研究结果表明，人类从很小的时候起，不仅能够识别相对地位，还会将地位纳入他们是否接近或回避他人的决策中，这与我们最近的灵长类亲戚不同。
