University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Sci Rep. 2022 Oct 29;12(1):18250. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-22640-z.
During a conflict, having a greater number of allies than the opposition can improve one's success in a conflict. However, allies must be aware that has a conflict has occurred, and this is often influenced by what they are able to see. Here, we explored whether infants' assessment of social dominance is influenced by whether or not social allies have visual access to an episode of intergroup conflict. In Experiment 1, 9-12-month-olds only expected an agent to be socially dominant if their allies were able to witness the conflict. Experiment 2 provided further support for this finding, as infants did not expect an agent from a numerically larger group to be socially dominant when allies were unable to witness the conflict. Together, these results suggest that infants do not simply use a heuristic in which "numerically larger groups are always more dominant". Importantly, infants are able to incorporate social allies' ability to witness a conflict when predicting social dominance between groups.
在冲突中，拥有比对手更多的盟友可以提高一个人在冲突中的成功几率。然而，盟友必须意识到冲突已经发生，而这往往受到他们所能看到的影响。在这里，我们探讨了婴儿对社会支配地位的评估是否受到社会盟友是否能够看到群体间冲突的影响。在实验 1 中，9-12 个月大的婴儿只有在他们的盟友能够目睹冲突时，才会预期一个代理具有社会支配地位。实验 2 为这一发现提供了进一步的支持，因为当盟友无法目睹冲突时，婴儿不会期望来自人数更多的群体的代理人具有社会支配地位。总之，这些结果表明，婴儿并不简单地使用一种启发式方法，即“人数更多的群体总是更具支配地位”。重要的是，婴儿在预测群体之间的社会支配地位时，能够将社会盟友目睹冲突的能力纳入考虑。
