Three- to 8-year old children do not favor male power when allocating resources

Abstract

International audienceAbstract From an early age, children perceive power imbalances between genders, but their attitudes toward gendered power remain largely unexplored. We studied this issue using a resource allocation task with 653 French children aged 3–8 (50.15% girls) recruited between 2022 and 2023. Participants were exposed to a dyadic power interaction and had to distribute more resources to either the dominant or the subordinate character. We tested three hypotheses: H1 predicted a male dominance bias; H2 predicted own-gender favoritism; and H3 predicted sensitivity to hierarchical status only. Contrary to H1, no pro-male bias was found. Results supported H3: younger children favored dominant characters, while older children favored subordinates. H2 was partially supported, showing own-gender bias, stronger in girls, without overriding sensitivity to status