Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Meta-Analysis
. 2022 May;93(3):831-844.
doi: 10.1111/cdev.13722. Epub 2021 Dec 27.

The boss is not always right: Norwegian preschoolers do not selectively endorse the testimony of a novel dominant agent

Erik Kjos Fonn  1 , Joakim Haugane Zahl  1 , Lotte Thomsen  1   2   3
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

The boss is not always right: Norwegian preschoolers do not selectively endorse the testimony of a novel dominant agent

Erik Kjos Fonn et al. Child Dev. 2022 May.

Abstract

Theories of cultural evolution posit that cues of competence-based prestige, rather than formidability-based dominance, should guide culturally transmitted learning, but recent work suggested that French and Kaqchikel Guatamalan preschoolers place their epistemic trust in dominant others. In contrast, this study shows that 249 three- to six-year-olds (116 girls, tested between 2016 and 2018 across metropolitan locations with varying ethnic composition and socioeconomic status) randomly endorsed the word-labels of dominant and subordinate agents in the egalitarian culture of Norway, using stimuli which solicit dominance inferences among infants and manipulating anonymity across studies to control for egalitarian desirability bias. A meta-analysis estimated that 48% endorsed the dominant's testimony. This demonstrates that the tendency to endorse the epistemic claims of dominant individuals does not emerge reliably in early childhood.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Abramovitch, R., & Grusec, J. E. (1978). Peer imitation in a natural setting. Child Development, 49, 60-65. https://doi.org/10.2307/1128593
    1. Anderson, C., & Berdahl, J. L. (2002). The experience of power: Examining the effects of power on approach and inhibition tendencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1362-1377. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1362
    1. Bendixsen, S., Bringslid, M. B., & Vike, H. (2018). Introduction: Egalitarianism in a Scandinavian context. In S. Bendixsen, M. B. Bringslid, & H. Vike (Eds.), Egalitarianism in Scandinavia: Historical and contemporary perspectives (pp. 1-44). Palgrave Macmillan.
    1. Bernard, S., Castelain, T., Mercier, H., Kaufmann, L., Van der Henst, J.-B., & Clément, F. (2016). The boss is always right: Preschoolers endorse the testimony of a dominant over that of a subordinate. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 152, 307-317. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2016.08.007
    1. Beugelsdijk, S., Maseland, R., & Van Hoorn, A. (2015). Are scores on Hofstede's dimensions of national culture stable over time? A cohort analysis. Global Strategy Journal, 5, 223-240. https://doi.org/10.1002/gsj.1098

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources