[Children's politics and the hierarchy dilemma]. / La politique de l'enfant et le dilemme de la hiérarchie.

ABSTRACT

Hierarchy is a recurrent feature of social life. From an early age, children are confronted with power relationships wherein a dominant individual imposes his/her will to a subordinate individual. Recent research has shown that young children develop sophisticated abilities in understanding power. However, little is known about how young children react to power-based inequality. Do they consider a dominant should be favored so as to strenghten the status quo ? Or do they consider that the subordinate must be favored to conteract a social inequality? In the current paper, I present and discuss a recent study, published in Developmental Psychology, that investigates this issue.