Early Understanding and Use of Social Status Information

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2019Social status, or hierarchies in which some people are positioned higher or lower than others based on a desirable dimension are ubiquitous. Social status also has important consequences for how people are treated such that higher status people receive perks and other benefits over lower status people. Adults readily recognize differences in status and potential consequences of status; however, less is known about the development of status understanding and whether children hold preferences based on others’ social status and act on these preferences. This dissertation aims to address these gaps by investigating early status understanding, preferences based on others’ social status, and prosociality based on a recipient’s social status. In Chapter 2, I investigated social status expectations in 17-month-old infants. Across five experiments, I found that infants recognize physical dominance differences and expect physically dominant individuals to receive more resources than less physically dominant individuals. Building off this work, in Chapter 3, I investigated whether social status impacts toddlers’ own behavior. I found that toddlers were more likely to help resource-rich over resource poor individuals suggesting that status information impacts behavior within the first two years of life. To determine whether there are developmental changes in early understanding and use of social status information, in Chapter 4, I investigated 4-6-year-old children’s social status understanding, preferences, and behavior based on status. I found that 4-6-year-old children recognized social status differences and preferred high-status over low-status people. However, there was a developmental shift in children’s prosocial behavior based on status. Both 5- and 6-year-old children gave more to low-status people thus correcting inequities, whereas 4-year-old children gave equally to high- and low-status people. Taken together, these studies suggest that even toddlers and young children pay attention to status and use this information to inform their preferences and prosocial behavior