A PILOT STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF FEMALE AND MALE VOICES ON TODDLERS’ EXPECTATIONS REGARDING THE OUTCOMES OF DOMINANCE INTERACTIONS

Men tend to hold more power compared to women. They are more likely to occupy hierarchically prestigious roles, fostering the expectation that positions of power are predominantly filled by men. It is known that preverbal infants mentally represent social dominance and by the age of 18 months, children have reliably acquired the ability to distinguish male and female voices and associate them with faces of the corresponding gender. In the present study, I investigated whether 18- to 24-month-old toddlers (N=48) expect male-voiced agents to prevail over female-voiced ones in right-of-way conflict. Using a violation-of-expectation paradigm, I found that toddlers looked longer when female-voiced characters prevailed in such dominance conflicts, suggesting an expectation that male-voiced agents would prevail instead. Future studies could investigate whether the identified expectation stems from early conceptualization of gender (i.e., recognizing the two agents as “male” and “female”) or if the perceptual features of male voices cueing greater physical size and power directly account for this dominance effect.