image: Familiarization trials introduced study participants to either the leader or the bully, denoted by respect-based or fear-based leadership, respectively. In the test trials, participants observed the protagonists' different responses to leader or bully instructions. view more
Credit: PNAS
A study that included 96 infants, around 21 months of age, suggests that infants can discriminate between respect-based and fear-based power structures; in the study, infants who viewed animations of interactions between three protagonists and a character depicted either as a leader or a bully expected the protagonists to continue to obey a leader's order after the leader left the scene, but the infants expected the protagonists to obey the same order, when given by a bully, only if the bully was present in the scene.
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Article #18-01677: "Infants distinguish between leaders and bullies," by Francesco Margoni, Renée Baillargeon, and Luca Surian.
MEDIA CONTACT: Renée Baillargeon, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL; tel: 217-333-5557; e-mail: <rbaillar@illinois.edu>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences