Heralding the Authoritarian? Orientation Toward Authority in Early Childhood

Michal Reifen Tagar, Christopher M Federico, Kristen E. Lyons, Steven Ludeke, Melissa Koenig

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

77 Scopus citations

Abstract

In the research reported here, we examined whether individual differences in authoritarianism have expressions in early childhood. We expected that young children would be more responsive to cues of deviance and status to the extent that their parents endorsed authoritarian values. Using a sample of 43 preschoolers and their parents, we found support for both expectations. Children of parents high in authoritarianism trusted adults who adhered to convention (vs. adults who did not) more than did children of parents low in authoritarianism. Furthermore, compared with children of parents low in authoritarianism, children of parents high in authoritarianism gave greater weight to a status-based "adult = reliable" heuristic in trusting an ambiguously conventional adult. Findings were consistent using two different measures of parents' authoritarian values. These findings demonstrate that children's trust-related behaviors vary reliably with their parents' orientations toward authority and convention, and suggest that individual differences in authoritarianism express themselves well before early adulthood.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)883-892
Number of pages10
JournalPsychological Science
Volume25
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2014

Keywords

  • authoritarianism
  • childhood development
  • early childhood
  • epistemic trust
  • heuristics
  • individual differences
  • learning
  • parent-child correspondence
  • personal values
  • selective trust
  • values

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