Affective bias in children's perceptions of dominance relationships

This study investigated children's perceptions of the relative strength of themselves and their peers, in 2 classes of 8-year-olds and 2 classes of 11-year-olds. Each child ranked his or her entire class in terms of strength and liking. Previous investigators have assumed that such strength perceptions reflect the dominance structure of the group. The present results, replicating previous findings, indicate that children consistently overestimate their place in this hierarchy in relation to their peers' perceptions. In addition, it was found that bias in perceptions of strength extended in a systematic way to the peer group, with liked peers being overranked and disliked peers being underranked. For most children, this result could be explained in terms of an enhanced evaluation of liked, but not disliked, peers, or in terms of liked, but not disliked, peers being perceived as similar to themselves. The theoretical and methodological implications of these results for the concept of dominance in children's groups are discussed.