How do preschoolers and adults ascribe authority?

Determining social hierarchies is an essential part of successful social behavior and already children are aware of hierarchical relationships. However, which cues humans use to determine hierarchies is highly variable; it includes behavioral as well as perceptual cues and changes throughout development. To investigate the interplay between different cues, preschoolers and adults participated in a behavioral paradigm comparing the impact of helping behavior (behavioral cue) and body height (perceptual cue) on the attribution of authority. Results revealed a double dissociation: Children did not use helping behavior as an indicator but attributed more authority to taller individuals. In contrast, adults ascribed more authority to a person who refused to help, but did not consider body height. A helping person was generally judged as nicer, suggesting that both, children and adults, interpreted the depicted situations correctly. Hence, our results suggest that children and adults use different information to attribute authority.