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

Anna Eve Helmlinger, Alexandre Foncelle, Cristina-Ioana Galusca, Hélène Maire, Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst, Rawan Charafeddine

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Anna Eve Helmlinger, Alexandre Foncelle, Cristina-Ioana Galusca, Hélène Maire, Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst, et al.. Three- to 8-year old children do not favor male power when allocating resources. Child Development, 2026, 10.1093/chdev/aacaf005. hal-05452768

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

Anna Eve Helmlinger<fnref n="1" />,*, Alexandre Foncelle<fnref n="1" />, Cristina-Ioana Galusca<fnref n="2" />,<fnref n="3" />, Hélène Maire<fnref n="4" />, Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst<fnref n="1" />,†, and Rawan Charafeddine<fnref n="4" />,‡

## Abstract

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 sub-ordinates. H2 was partially supported, showing own-gender bias, stronger in girls, without overriding sensitivity to status.

**Keywords** gendered power, own-gender favoritism, resource distribution

## Lay summary

Preschool children already understand that men are more likely to hold power than women. But do they consider this inequality to be legitimate? To answer this question, children aged 3–8 (N = 653) were asked to distribute coveted resources (stickers) to two characters, one of whom exercised power over the other. The results showed that children did not favor male power over female power. The results revealed instead two main findings. First, children tended to favor individuals of the same sex as themselves. Second, they took into account the status of the characters. At ages 3–4, they favored the dominant character, and at ages 7–8, they favored the subordinate character.

The imbalance of power between men and women is a structuring aspect of gender differences, deeply ingrained in the fabric of social interactions and perception (Ridgeway, 2011). Male power manifests repeatedly across various domains, including political institutions, sexual violence, income inequality, and everyday relationships (Criado-Perez, 2019). Such pervasive imbalances influence how individuals perceive themselves and shape their aspirations from an early age (Bian et al., 2017). Indeed, children recognize that men more often exert power over women and occupy more powerful positions in society. For instance, in a survey conducted in the U.S. before the 2016 election, school-age children were aware that presidents were “usually” men and incorrectly believed that other countries had never had a female

president (Patterson et al., 2019). Furthermore, children's expectations of gender hierarchy extend beyond representations of institutional power, permeating everyday relational contexts. When reasoning about hierarchical situations involving child characters, children as young as four already associate higher-status roles and powerful individuals with male characters (Charafeddine et al., 2020; Heck et al., 2021; Mandalaywala et al., 2020; Santhanagopalan et al., 2022).

These gender-based expectations raise a crucial question: If children see that gender determines who holds power, do they come to see this as legitimate? This question is particularly salient given that children's own social identities are necessarily embedded within these gender hierarchies. Studying how children

<footnote n="1">¹Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon CRNL U1028 UMR5292, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, INSERM, TRAJECTOIRES, Bron F-69500, France</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²Laboratoire Inter-Universitaire de Psychologie LIP/PC2S, Université Grenoble Alpes, 38000 Grenoble, France</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³CNRS Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition LPNC UMR5105, Université Grenoble Alpes, 38000 Grenoble, France</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴Laboratoire Lorrain de Psychologie et Neurosciences, 2LPN (UR 7489), Université de Lorraine, Nancy F-54000, France</footnote>

<footnote>*Corresponding author: Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon CRNL U1028 UMR5292, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, INSERM, TRAJECTOIRES, Bron F-69500, France. Email: aehelmlinger@gmail.com</footnote>

<footnote>†These authors equally contributed to this study.</footnote>
evaluate and respond to situations where males exert power over females—or vice versa—can provide insights into the early internalization of gendered power norms and, in turn, into the developmental origins of women's persistent underrepresentation in positions of power and leadership (Heck et al., 2021; Vial & Cimpian, 2024). Furthermore, this approach can help identify the psychological mechanisms that act as early barriers to gender equality, as well as determine when these barriers emerge and whether they strengthen or weaken over time.

The literature on adults shows a tendency to evaluate women in positions of power more negatively than men. For example, people tend to judge a woman candidate for a job as less hirable and likable than a male counterpart, even when both are equally qualified and show the same self-promoting behavior (Rudman et al., 2012). They are also less inclined to vote for a female political candidate who is perceived as power-seeking compared to a male counterpart perceived the same way (Okimoto & Brescoll, 2010). Actions and attitudes toward women who violate gender stereotypes seem to sanction behaviors that challenge the gender hierarchy (Moss-Racusin et al., 2010).

The current study aims to examine children's emerging attitudes toward gendered power. Specifically, we seek to determine the extent to which children may favor male power over female power. One way to assess attitudes toward social inequality is to have children distribute resources between two characters. Favoring one character over another not only reveals affiliative attitudes, but also provides insights into political intuitions, as it involves decisions about fairness, equity, and managing relationships between individuals or groups (McAuliffe et al., 2017). Indeed, resource distribution requires the decision-maker to prioritize certain values over others. For instance, conservative values, which legitimize established hierarchies, tend to replicate the existing social order in resource allocation (van Lange et al., 2012). In contrast, egalitarian views emphasize equality and equity, potentially leading to an equal distribution of resources, or favoring those who are disadvantaged.

Recent research has used distribution tasks within the context of power dynamics, where children saw a dominant character who imposed their will on a subordinate character, and the findings revealed a notable developmental shift in their attitudes. While the 3- to 4-year-old children favored the dominant character, 5- to 6-year-olds showed no clear preference and by 7-8 years, they allocated more resources to the subordinate character (Charafeddine et al., 2016; Cheng et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2021, 2023). In another study, Enright et al. (2020) even found the advantage given to the lower-status individual as early as ages 4-5, whereas 3-year-old children responded at chance level. It has been suggested that younger children maintain the status quo because they perceive dominant individuals as valuable social partners who are successful in getting their way (Charafeddine et al., 2016) and more competent individuals (Bernard et al., 2016). Additionally, they tend to equate authority with fairness, assuming that those in power are rightfully in control (Piaget, 1932). However, as they grow older, children develop greater sensitivity to social inequalities and equity concerns (McAuliffe et al., 2017), and become more inclined to challenge hierarchical structures (Laupa & Turiel, 1986). Consequently, they tend to favor the subordinate individual to counteract perceived injustice (Charafeddine et al., 2016; Cheng et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2021). This developmental pattern is also observed in more direct preference measures assessing

children's social evaluations of dominant vs. subordinate individuals (Enright et al., 2020; Hawley, 1999).

However, early research did not manipulate the gender of the characters as children viewed only male characters (Charafeddine et al., 2016's and Cheng et al., 2021's studies), or characters whose gender was matched to the participants (i.e., Enright et al., 2020 and Zhang et al., 2021, 2023). The gender-matched methodology has sometimes been viewed as a way “to control for possible preexisting assumptions about power and gender” (Gülgöz & Gelman, 2017, p. 951) and “to avoid any gender-specific expectations about rank” (Kajanus et al., 2020, Supplementary Material). The goal of the present study is precisely to unravel these “pre-existing assumptions” by examining how children react to power relations between gender categories.

In the current study, children aged 3–8 had to distribute resources unequally between a dominant and a subordinate character, who could be of the same or different gender. Following a systematic manipulation of gender, girls and boys could thus see power interactions between two females ($F > F$), two males ($M > M$) or between a female and a male ($F > M$; $M > F$). In the following sections, we present three distinct hypotheses that may account for children's attitudes toward gendered power.

## Children's awareness of male power: a pathway to its endorsement?

A first hypothesis is that children view it as legitimate for males to hold power over females. As they recognize the predominance of male power, their descriptive understanding of gendered hierarchies may translate into a prescriptive judgment, through a normative inference from “is” to “should” (Hume, 1738/2000). From the perspective of system-supporting theories, individuals tend to legitimize rather than challenge existing social structures, such as group hierarchies and inequalities. This legitimization may be driven by motivational processes linked to epistemic needs (e.g., needs for stability and cognitive closure) or emotional needs (mitigating discomfort caused by perceived inequalities), as proposed by the System Justification Theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994). It may also derive from cognitive heuristics that lead individuals to explain social orders in terms of inherent properties that convey intuitions of necessity (Hussak & Cimpian, 2015). Moreover, in the specific case of gender groups, the status-incongruity hypothesis states that individuals are motivated to maintain the gender hierarchy and tend to penalize women who display agentic behavior, perceiving them as less likable, less hirable, and more dominant than men exhibiting the same behavior (Rudman et al., 2012).

In line with this framework, previous research has shown, on the one hand, that children recognize the male advantage in social power, and on the other hand, that their awareness of how the world *is* can serve as a guide to what the world *should be*. Regarding the first point, children perceive male characters as exerting greater power over female characters than vice versa. For instance, in (Charafeddine et al.'s (2020) Experiment 1), preschoolers were presented with two non-gendered characters, one adopting a dominant body posture and the other a submissive posture. Children easily guessed that the character with a dominant posture was the one who was making a verbal statement expressing power, while the character with the submissive posture was the one expressing obedience. Next, when they were
asked to designate who was the girl and who was the boy, 70% of 4- to 5-year-old children judged that the powerful character was a boy. This result was comparable for girls and boys and in countries with different gender inequality indices, namely Lebanon, France and Norway. Likewise, Helmlinger et al. (under review) found that 4- to 9-year-old girls and boys more frequently attributed a male gender to a powerful character who controlled a resource (see also Gülgöz, 2015), whether that character kept the resource for themselves, shared it or gave it to the subordinate. Other work also reported that by the end of preschool, boys and girls associate male gender with more social power (see Mandalaywala et al., 2020, p. 13).

Second, research suggests that children's descriptive knowledge about social regularities influences their evaluative judgments. With respect to gender, children not only recognize gender norms and stereotypes but also endorse them and evaluate norm violations negatively, sometimes at levels comparable to moral transgressions (i.e., a boy wearing a dress, Levy et al., 1995). Moreover, a strong argument in favor of an *Is-to-Should* inference in children's social reasoning comes from research on the evaluation of unfamiliar fictive groups (Roberts et al., 2017). Unlike familiar social groups (e.g., gender groups), they cannot be associated with positive or negative cues from the child's environment (e.g., parents, peers). In their research, Roberts et al. (2017) presented children with two fictive groups (Hibbles and Glerks), each following a specific behavioral pattern (e.g., eating one type of berries) and then observed children's evaluations of an individual's conforming behavior or non-conforming behavior (e.g., a Glerk eating a type of berries eaten by Hibbles). Children disapproved of non-conformity at rates above chance (Roberts et al., 2017, Study 2). In the same vein, evidence for the perpetuation of group-based inequality in childhood has also been found. In a study by Olson et al. (2011), children aged 3.5-11.5 observed two groups differing in either skin color or shirt color, with one group consistently having more cookies than the other. When asked to distribute cookies to new group members, children tended to favor those from the more advantaged group, thus preserving the existing hierarchy. These findings highlight that children's social reasoning not only reflects existing social norms but also contributes to their reinforcement, which may in turn influence the perpetuation of social hierarchies from an early age.

## Prioritizing one's own gender?

A second hypothesis is that children tend to favor characters of their own gender. Such a bias would reflect early emerging ingroup preferences. Indeed, own-gender preference has been extensively documented across various tasks investigating children's attitudes, including friendship preference (Leman & Lam, 2008), epistemic trust (Ma & Woolley, 2013), influence in decision-making (Shutts et al., 2010), and are observed at both implicit and explicit levels (Dunham et al., 2016; Halim et al., 2017). More specifically, in the context of resource distribution, preschoolers tend to favor more individuals of their own gender over those of a different gender (Halim et al., 2017; Renno & Shutts, 2015). However, research suggests that own-gender favoritism may change across development: while girls tend to maintain a strong implicit and explicit preference for their gender, boys exhibit a decline in own-gender preference with age (Dunham et al., 2016).

Moreover, several pieces of evidence indicate that own-gender favoritism may occur in the context of power. First, when faced with a dominance situation resulting from a conflict between a woman and a man, preschoolers prefer to affiliate with the dominant individual if that person shares their gender rather than with a subordinate of their gender or a dominant of the other gender (Galusca et al., 2025). Second, children seem to view power positively for themselves as they identify more with a dominant rather than with a subordinate position (Charafeddine et al., 2020, Experiment 2; Mandalaywala et al., 2020). The association between the self and one's own gender may lead children to believe that power is preferable when held by individuals of their own gender.

Third, an own-gender bias can sometimes be found even in children's representations of the link between gender and power. For instance, in Charafeddine et al.'s Experiment 3 (2020), preschool children had to determine which of two gendered puppets, a male or a female, imposed their will on the other and which controlled more resources. Approximately 70% of boys believed that the male puppet held the dominant position, while girls' responses were at chance level. This pattern, showing that boys attribute more power to male characters and that girls show no clear tendency, was found in various contexts involving decision-making power tasks (Mandalaywala et al., 2020; Reyes-Jaquez & Koenig, 2022) and in “draw me a leader” tasks (Santhanagopalan et al., 2022). This gender difference suggests that the early representation of gendered power engages distinct mechanisms. On the one hand, children show awareness of the power of males over females. On the other hand, they also perceive their own gender as relatively powerful, indicating a favorable bias toward same-gender individuals. In the case of boys, the awareness of male power aligns with their own-gender bias, whereas in girls, these factors are in conflict.

## Prioritizing the characters' power positions?

A third hypothesis is that children prioritize the characters' power position over their gender when making resource allocation decisions. According to this hypothesis, age plays a key role, as children's attitudes toward power tend to shift with development. Specifically, they are expected to favor dominant individuals in early childhood and increasingly favor subordinates as they grow older (Charafeddine et al., 2016; Cheng et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2021). Several studies have shown that gender is not the primary factor in shaping attitudes and behaviors. In resource allocation tasks, own-gender bias disappears when the resources can be divided in a fair way, such as allocating the same quantity of resources to each recipient (i.e., one coin to a girl and one coin to a boy; Renno & Shutts, 2015). From the age of 6, children expect teachers to follow principles of fairness and equality when distributing resources between a girl and a boy who have accomplished the same task (McAuliffe et al., 2023), and they find it unacceptable when an authority figure distributes gender-neutral rewards in a way that favors girls over boys, or vice versa (Conry-Murray, 2017). Young children also judge that it is not right to exclude a child from an activity because of their gender (Theimer et al., 2001) or to establish school rules that enforce gender norms (Conry-Murray & Turiel, 2012).
Not only can children reject gender-based inequalities, but they also perceive them as less legitimate than other forms of inequality, such as those based on merit. This suggests that children's judgments about fairness are not driven by a simple aversion to inequality but rather by an evaluation of its underlying reasons, seeing gender as an unjustified criterion for unequal treatment. For instance, Rizzo and Killen (2020) found that children aged 3-8 explicitly judged unequal gender-based resource allocation to be "less okay" than unequal merit-based resource allocation. Moreover, in a study by Rizzo et al. (2020), children were presented with a resource inequality between a male and a female character based on merit ("the boy/girl who worked harder") or based on gender bias by the distributor ("I like girls/boys better"). When distributing resources themselves, participants favored the disadvantaged character more in the gender bias scenario, and did not favor their own gender. Sensitivity to the unfairness of resource inequality between genders was further evidenced in a costly third-party intervention task in which children could give some of their own resources when they wanted to compensate for inequality (Corbit et al., 2021). Four to 9-year-old intervened more against pro-female and pro-male unequal distributions than against equal ones, a tendency that increased with age. Moreover, children intervened equally whether the unequal distribution favored or disfavored their own gender, suggesting that their responses were guided more by fairness concerns than by ingroup bias. Finally, consistent with the idea that children's attitudes toward power may not be primarily influenced by the gender of the powerful, Vial and Cimpian (2024, Study 1) found that children (5-10 y.o.) did not expect a boy leader to receive more social support from peers than a girl leader. However, this study focused on children's meta-representations—their perceptions of presumed peers' attitudes toward leaders—rather than directly assessing their own responses to powerholders. In contrast, here we more directly examine children's own behaviors and choices in response to gendered power.

## The current study

The current study aims at investigating children's distribution pattern when faced with gendered power by systematically manipulating the gender of the interactants (same-gender: F > F and M > M and mixed-gender: F > M and M > F). Three non-mutually exclusive hypotheses, as outlined previously, will be tested. According to the first hypothesis ("H1: pro-male bias"), children's allocations will be guided by normative expectations regarding male power in mixed-gender situations. Thus, children will advantage the dominant character more in the normative situation (M > F) than in the non-normative situation (F > M). According to the second hypothesis, children's allocations will be guided by an own-gender favoritism ("H2: own-gender favoritism"). Children will favor the character of the same gender as themselves in mixed-gender conditions (M > F; F > M). Finally, according to the third hypothesis, children's allocations will be guided by the recipients' power position ("H3: attitudes driven by power"). Regardless of how children use gender to guide their choices (as predicted by H1, H2, or a combination of both), this hypothesis would be supported if allocations exhibit a similar developmental shift—from favoring dominant individuals to favoring subordinates—across all conditions. After the distribution task, we introduced a preference question asking participants which character they wanted to play

with. This allowed us to explore children's *affiliative* attitudes alongside their *distributive* ones. Prior research has shown a divergence between these two domains. For instance, Enright et al. (2020, Study 4) observed that while children may allocate more resources to a low-power individual, without necessarily preferring them. Similarly, Charafeddine et al. (2016) reported that younger children tended to allocate more resources to a dominant individual without demonstrating a preference for that individual. A secondary goal of our study is thus to investigate whether gender, which is a prominent affiliative cue, influences preferential attitudes within a power context.

## Method

### Participants

A total of 653 children aged 3 to 8 years old participated in this experiment and were included in the analyses (dates of data collection: 2022–2023). Children were grouped into three age groups: 3 to 4 years olds ($n=219$, 110 girls; $M_{age}=4.15$ years, SD=0.52, age-range=3.03–4.99), 5- to 6-years-olds ($n=222$, 111 girls; $M_{age}=5.99$ years, SD=0.55, age-range=5.01–6.99), and 7- to 8-years-olds ($n=212$, 107 girls; $M_{age}=8.03$ years, SD=0.61, age-range=7.00–8.99 years). Children were tested in 10 kindergartens, 9 public schools and 1 leisure center in the Lyon metropolitan area (France). Twenty-eight additional children were excluded because of (i) incorrect responses to the comprehension questions indicating that they did not understand the proposed situation ($n=21$; $M_{age}=4.1$ years, SD=1.01, age-range=3.02–6.58 years); (ii) inattentiveness ($n=5$; $M_{age}=4.04$, SD=0.3, age-range=3.76–4.58 years); (iii) experimenter errors ($n=2$; $M_{age}=7.37$ years). All included children distributed the stickers except one girl who decided not to, explaining that she didn't want to upset one of the characters. Based on previous research's sample (Cheng et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2021), we aimed to include at least 25 participants in each gender group by age group and by condition (25×2 genders × 3 age groups × 4 conditions = 600 participants).

In accordance with French Law n°78-17 from January 6, 1978, on Information Technology, Data Files, and Civil Liberties, we did not collect the race/ethnicity information of the participants. Based on the Social Position Index (SPI), which characterizes the socio-economic and cultural background of schools, we estimated that our schools had a moderately low to moderately high SPI. The SPI, or "Indice de Position Sociale," ranges from 66 for the lowest position in the French department of Rhône to 147.6 for the highest position. For our schools, the SPI ranged from 94.7 to 121.5, based on data from 612 participants (see Supplementary Material Table S0.2). The study was granted approval by the local Board of Education and by INSERM's ethics committee (Institutional Review Board (IRB00003888, IORG0003254)). In accordance with this committee and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we used the rule of non-opposition as a parental consent procedure: parents were informed about the goals of the study prior to data collection through an official informative letter indicating that their children would be included in the study unless they expressed their disagreement. In addition, during the experimental session, the children were also asked to give their consent. Firstly, after the two experimenters had introduced themselves to the class, indicating the purpose of their presence, they asked the children if they wished to take part in the study. Secondly, the experimenters invited each
child volunteer into the school's experimental room and asked them again if they still agreed to take part in the study.

## Design

This study's design and hypotheses were preregistered (see https://osf.io/4mg5f). A 3 (age-group: 3-4; 5-6; 7-8 y.o.) × 2 (gender: female vs. male participants) × 4 (condition: M > M; F > F; M > F; F > M) between-subjects design was used. The conditions were based on the two characters' gender which could be of (i) the same gender (a male exercising power over another male [M > M] or a female exercising power over another female [F > F]) or (ii) of different genders (a male exercising power over a female [M > F] or a female exercising power over a male [F > M]). Only one resource allocation task per participant was used to prevent contamination across trials and to reduce drop outs due to fatigue in the younger age group.

## Procedure

The procedure was adapted from previous research (Charafeddine et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2021). Children were told a story of two characters discussing games they would like to play together. On three occasions, one of the characters, (i.e., the dominant) succeeded in imposing the game on the other (i.e., the subordinate). After a training session (see below) and the presentation of the story, children had to distribute three stickers between the two characters so that resources could not be evenly distributed (resource allocation task). Then they were asked to designate the character with which they would like to play a card game (playmate preference task).

**Training task.** Prior to the experimental tasks, we trained the children on unequal resource allocation by asking them to allocate three stickers to two quasi-identical monkey drawings presented on a computer screen as in a previous resource allocation study (Renno & Shutts, 2015). Specifically, children were presented with two drawings of monkeys said to “love stickers very much” and were asked to distribute three stickers to them, by putting them in their respective boxes. To make sure that children associated having more stickers with having an advantage, they were asked to indicate which monkey was “happier with what it has in its box” (see Supplementary Material, 6.1. Script). Sometimes children did not distribute the third sticker; in this case, the experimenter invited them to give the third sticker to one of the two monkeys. The experimenters explicitly mentioned to all children that the subsequent resource allocation task will be similar to the training one. If children only allocated two stickers, the experimenter asked them to distribute the third sticker as well. Hence, one monkey always had more stickers than the other and the children had to say which was the happier monkey and why. If children indicated the monkey with more stickers, the experimenter continued with the main task. Otherwise, the experimenter explained that the monkey with two stickers was happier before moving on to the main task.

**Resource allocation (main task).** After the training task, participants heard a story about how two children decided which games to play. The characters were introduced as friends, from the same city, going to the same school, in the same class, and having the same age (specifically, the same age as the participant). On three occasions, the characters expressed different opinions about the games they could play together and one of them imposed

their preferred game. The interaction remained peaceful and the characters enjoyed playing together. Although peaceful, this interaction was characterized by dominance (Mascaro & Csibra, 2012) rather than by a more positive hierarchical construct such as prestige: the two interactants had conflicting goals, and one prevailed over the other. The dyadic interaction used in this task was largely inspired by previous work depicting dominance interactions (Charafeddine et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2021) while deliberately excluding coercion or aggression that might bias children against the power holder (Thomas et al., 2018). The experimenter referred to them by pointing and mentioning their gender (“the girl,” “the boy”) in mixed-gender conditions or saying “this child,” in same-gender conditions. A typical exchange (F > M condition) about a game is provided in Figure 1 and in the Supplementary

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1** Example of a series of interactions where the girl holds decision-making power.</figcaption></figure>
**Materials** (6.1 Script). After the story, children were asked two comprehension questions: "Which child always chose the games? Which child never played their favorite games?". If children were unable to answer the comprehension questions, the experimenter told them a simpler version of the story, and asked them the same two questions again. If children were still not able to answer correctly, they continued the task but were excluded from the analyses. Then, the experimenter instructed: "Now you can distribute stickers as you want" and participants distributed three stickers between the two characters by putting them in each one's respective boxes, as in the training trial. After the distribution, children were invited to explain the reasons behind their distributive choices.

*Playmate preference (additional task)*. After the distribution task the experimenter asked a preference question: "Imagine that you could play a card game with one of the two children, who would you play a card game with?". Participants had to justify their choice afterwards. Finally, they were asked to show the character who was in charge.

## Material

The material used was adapted from previous research (Zhang et al., 2021). The study was presented on a laptop computer via a 7 slides PowerPoint® presentation (see Figure 1; the material used for each condition is also available here: https://osf.io/3z8s5). The drawing of the dominant and the subordinate characters, their position on the left or right side of the screen and the games that each proposed were counterbalanced across participants. We used three identical stickers of animals for the distribution task.

## Data coding and analysis

### Resource allocation task

All statistical analyses were conducted using R software (version 4.3.2; R Core Team, 2019). Data were analyzed using a Bayesian logistic regressions approach. Bayesian approach was used because it offers more nuanced and reliable inferences than traditional frequentist approaches (Van de Schoot et al., 2021). We used the brms and emmeans packages (brms v2.19.0, and emmeans v1.8.8). For each analysis, we first performed a model comparison using Bayes Factor with bayestest R package (bayestestR v0.13.1). Data and code are available on OSF at https://osf.io/ytcw5.

During the resource distribution task, one of the experimenters noted the number of stickers that the children put in the boxes of the dominant and subordinate characters. Our primary dependent variable for this first task was whether children distributed more stickers to the subordinate or to the dominant. A secondary dependent variable was the size of the difference between allocations (three or two stickers for the advantaged recipient; see Supplementary Material Table S1.1 for results concerning this variable). Directional predictions and hypotheses were formulated and preregistered concerning children's decisions to favor the dominant or the subordinate. Testing these hypotheses represents our primary confirmatory analysis. First, in line with previous literature we expected to find an age-related shift in resource distribution. Specifically, we anticipated a transition from favoring the dominant at 3-4 years to favoring the subordinate at 7-8 years, at least in same-gender power relations, which is the condition that yielded this shift in the past (Charafeddine, et al., 2016;

Cheng, et al., 2021; Zhang, et al., 2021, 2023). The following three hypotheses concern the effect of gender constitution of the dyad on resource distributions.

According to H1 ("pro-male advantage"), children would distribute more resources to the dominant character in the $M > F$ than in the $F > M$ condition. According to the second hypothesis (H2: "own-gender favoritism"), children are expected to distribute more resources to the character of their own gender in mixed-gender conditions. In terms of the statistical effects, an interaction between participant's gender and condition is expected under this hypothesis: female participants would distribute more to the dominant in $F > M$ than in all other conditions and to the subordinate in $M > F$ than in all other conditions, while male participants would do the reverse (i.e., preferentially advantage the subordinate in $F > M$ and the dominant in $M > F$). An indirect consequence of H2 concerns the developmental shift from pro-dominant to pro-subordinate distributions in mixed-gender conditions. If distributions are guided more by gender than by power position in mixed-gender conditions, then the effect of age should be modulated by the condition. Conversely, according to H3 ("power-driven attitudes"), children's distributions should vary with age across all conditions.

As planned in the pre-registration, the power position of the character favored by the participant's distribution was coded as a dichotomous variable (0 for dominant and 1 for subordinate). We included the following factors: Gender of the participant (2: F; M); Age group (3: 3- to 4-years-old; 5- to 6-years-old and 7- to 8-years-old); and Condition (4: $M > M$, $F > F$, $M > F$ and $F > M$). We also included the following three-way interaction Age Group $\times$ Condition $\times$ Gender in the full model, which was compared to the simple model (without interactions), to models with only one of the interactions (including "Model 1": Condition $\times$ Gender, and "Model 2": Condition $\times$ Age group) and to models with two interactions (including "Model 3": Condition $\times$ Gender + Condition $\times$ Age group). The model comparison revealed that data is more likely to occur under "Model 1" (see Supplementary Material, Table S2.1 for details about the model comparisons): Favored Power Position $\sim$ Gender + Age Group + Condition + Gender $\times$ Condition.

### Playmate preference

After the children had made their distributions, they designated the character with which they wished to play a card game (playmate preference task). The dependent variable for this analysis was the power position of the preferred character coded as 0 for dominant and 1 for subordinate. The question of playmate preference is exploratory in our study, as such we did not formulate specific predictions. Moreover, we also expected that the choice of preferred character would be influenced by the prior resource allocation decision, due to children persisting in their first choice or, alternatively, trying to equilibrate by switching between the characters. We therefore constructed our logistic regression models with the same explanatory factors as above, with the addition of the response to the first task (i.e., the power position of the advantaged character). We included up to four-way interaction in the model comparison step. Model comparison (see Supplementary Material, Table S4.1) showed that the data is most likely to occur under the following model, which includes 2 three-way interactions: Playmate Preference $\sim$ Favored Power Position + Gender + Age Class + Favored Power Position $\times$ Gender $\times$ Age Class + Favored Power Position $\times$ Gender $\times$
Condition. Details about the model's coefficient can be found in the **Supplementary Material (Table S4.2)**.

## Children's justifications in the resource allocation and playmate preference tasks

Children's justifications for both tasks ($N=662$ for resource allocation and $N=646$ for playmate preference) were divided into three sets and each set was coded by a pair of independent coders. Discrepancies between coders were resolved through discussion. We first distinguished between relevant and irrelevant responses. Irrelevant responses included vague answers (e.g., "I wanted to"), answers that did not make clear sense to the coders (e.g., "she wanted to") and empty answers (e.g., "because"). Relevant responses were categorized into three primary categories that referred to (i) power, (ii) gender, or (iii) attraction to the characters' features, except their gender, such as their physical appearance or their preferred games. These three broad categories were further subdivided into finer subcategories.

### Reference to power asymmetry

When children advantaged the dominants (in the allocation task) or chose them (in the preference task), they could justify their choices by referring to the situation of asymmetric decision-making power. We termed this sub-category of responses "maintaining asymmetry" (e.g., "because he decided everything," "because she chose all the games"). Among these children, some just did a summary of the situation as in the examples above while others gave more details (e.g., "she always decides the game and she always wins," "she always gets what she wants"). Finally, children who referred to positive characteristics of the dominant were also included in this sub-category even though they did not explicitly mention power (e.g., "because he's always right," "he's stronger," "she has lots of ideas"; "he was more energetic").

The second sub-category "compensating for asymmetry" was applied when children advantaged or preferred subordinates and justified their choice by referring to power asymmetry. Justifications in this sub-category were of two sorts: (i) either children simply mentioned the asymmetry ("mentioning the asymmetry," e.g., "She chose all the time and she always said "yes".") ("(ii) or they referred to either the subordinate's prosocial qualities (e.g., "He was so nice so I gave him 2," "He's nicer") or to the dominant's antisociality (e.g., "He wasn't nice," "I wanted to give more to the boy, because the girl isn't nice"). References to prosociality were coded differently in the resource allocation task and in the preference task. In the resource allocation task, they were considered as one sub-category of "compensating for asymmetry" called "prosociality or antisociality." In the preference task, they were subdivided in two different sub-categories: children could refer to the prosociality of the subordinate character (sub-category: "prosociality") by mentioning it (e.g., "He's nicer" "He's kinder"; sub-category "prosociality mentioned"), or by expressing an intention to take advantage from it or to avoid playing with a dominant individual (e.g., "The boy when I say I want to play something else is going to say no," "Because I could decide the games" "if she wants to play something else, she'll end up saying okay"; sub-category "taking advantage of the subordinate").

### Reference to gender

In both tasks, children referred to gender in a variety of ways. They could simply mention it (e.g., "It's a girl", "It's a boy"; sub-category:

"gender mentioned") or express positive attitudes toward a specific gender (e.g., "I like boys" "I like girls"; sub-category: "attraction to one gender"). Sometimes, they referred to their own gender (e.g., "I'm a girl too" "It's a boy like me and those who are girls will give more to girls," sub-category: "gender self"). Finally, children could mention stereotyped traits (e.g., "In real life, it's the men who have a lot of money and choose more"; "Boys earn more than girls! It's also true that if I play with a girl, she loses all the time and stops the game to play another," "A girl is quieter at playing cards"; sub-category "gender traits").

### Attraction to the characters

These subcategories were not included in the pre-registration and were created from the data collected. In this category, justifications revealed positive evaluations not directly linked to power asymmetry or gender, such as when children indicated that they liked the "character" (e.g., "I like her"), referred to their "physique" (e.g., "She's the prettiest"), to "games" (e.g., "I prefer her games in the story: the slide and the tree house") or to "familiarity" (e.g., "She looks like my friend Héloïse").

On the preference task, an additional category of answers referred to the stickers allocated in the previous task, these were classified under a new category "stickers" (e.g., "Because I want to play with the stickers," "Because I gave him more stickers," "Because he doesn't have a sticker").

## Results

### Resource allocation task

We performed model selection using Bayes factors, specifying weakly informative priors (i.e., normal(0,1)) to reduce their influence on inference while ensuring model convergence (McElreath, 2018). Bayesian model selection evaluates the relative evidence for different models, with a higher Bayes factor indicating stronger support from the data (see Supplementary Material, Table S2.1). As illustrated in Figure 2, age group was a significant factor: 7- to 8-year-olds were significantly more likely than 5- to 6-year-olds to give more stickers to the subordinate than to the dominant ($\beta$ estimate = 0.89; 95% CI [0.48, 1.31]; $BF_{10}$ = 193). Specifically, 7-8-y-o. children were significantly more likely to distribute more stickers to the subordinate character ($\beta$ estimate = 1.17; 95% CI [0.85, 1.49]) while 5-6-y-o. children were not ($\beta$ estimate = 0.27; 95% CI [-0.004; 0.55]). Moreover, 3-4-year-olds were significantly less likely than 5- to 6-year-olds to give more stickers to the subordinate character ($\beta$ estimate = -0.77; 95% CI [-1.71, -0.38]; $BF_{10}$ = 127). Children in the younger age group were significantly more likely to distribute more stickers to the dominant character ($\beta$ estimate = -0.49; 95% CI [-0.77; -0.20]). Age group was a significant factor in predicting the outcome of the distribution task in all conditions and the model selection step showed that including the interaction between Condition and Age group made the model significantly worse at predicting the data than a model without this interaction (Model 2 vs. Model 4 (M2/M4): $BF_{10}$ = 2.45e10³). The fact that the effect of Age group was not modulated by condition indicates that the progressive shift from pro-dominant attitudes in the youngest group to pro-subordinate attitudes in the oldest group was robust across all four conditions. The study hence replicates the developmental course typically reported in previous studies,
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2** Proportion of children allocating more resources to the subordinate by participant gender, age-group, and condition.</figcaption></figure>

<table><caption>**Table 1** Pairwise comparisons of condition × gender interaction effects in the resource allocation task.</caption><thead><tr><th>Gender</th><th>Condition 1</th><th>Condition 2</th><th>β estimate<sup>a</sup></th><th>95% CI</th><th>BF<sub>10</sub></th><th>BF<sub>01</sub></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="5">Female participants</td><td>M > M (57.50%)</td><td>F > F (58.97%)</td><td>0.02</td><td>[-0.63,0.66]</td><td></td><td>9.10<sup>b</sup></td></tr><tr><td>M > M</td><td>F > M</td><td><strong>0.96</strong></td><td><strong>[0.3, 1.61]</strong></td><td><strong>7.79<sup>b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>M > M</td><td>M > F</td><td>-0.94</td><td>[-1.65, -0.27]</td><td><strong>5.02<sup>b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>F > F</td><td>F > M</td><td><strong>0.95</strong></td><td><strong>[0.28, 1.61]</strong></td><td><strong>4.26</strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>F > F</td><td>M > F</td><td>-0.96</td><td>[-1.66, -0.27]</td><td><strong>3.7<sup>b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="5">Male participants</td><td>F > M (35.14%)</td><td>M > F (75.68%)</td><td>-1.91</td><td>[-2.61, -1.2]</td><td><strong>5,837<sup>b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>M > M (55.70%)</td><td>F > F (56.25%)</td><td>-0.26</td><td>[-0.89,0.41]</td><td></td><td>9.51<sup>b</sup></td></tr><tr><td>M > M</td><td>F > M</td><td>-0.59</td><td>[-1.26,0.07]</td><td></td><td>2.69</td></tr><tr><td>M > M</td><td>M > F</td><td>0.40</td><td>[-0.22,1.07]</td><td></td><td>6.32<sup>b</sup></td></tr><tr><td>F > F</td><td>F > M</td><td>-0.34</td><td>[-1.01,0.35]</td><td></td><td>10.89<sup>b</sup></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>F > F</td><td>M > F</td><td>0.65</td><td>[0, 1.3]</td><td></td><td>2.56</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>F > M (68.49%)</td><td>M > F (46.67%)</td><td><strong>0.99</strong></td><td><strong>[0.35,1.68]</strong></td><td><strong>4.07<sup>b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

generalizing it to two types of mixed-gender power interactions: when the dominant is male (M > F) and when the dominant is female (F > M, see Figure 2). Importantly, the age-related progression from favoring the dominant to favoring the subordinate did not significantly interact neither with the condition, nor with the interaction of Condition with participant's Gender (an interaction term that significantly made the model worse in accounting for the data (BF<sub>[Full model/Best model]</sub>=1.04.10<sup>-7</sup>; see Supplementary Material, Table S2.1). Condition was also a significant factor in this model (see Tables S2.2 and S2.3). The two mixed-gender conditions significantly diverged from both same-gender conditions (see Table 1). Direct comparison of F > M and M > F shows that children are more likely to distribute resources to the dominant character in the F > M condition

than in the M > F condition (β estimate = -1.70; 95% CI [-2.41, -1.05]). This result contradicts H1 (“pro-male bias”) as children showed an overall pro-female bias instead.

However, the model also revealed a significant interaction between Condition and participant's Gender, showing that the tendency to advantage the female character in mixed-gender conditions was lower for male than for female participants (male vs. female participants in F > M: β estimate =1.56, 95%CI [0.64, 2.49] and male vs. female participants in M > F: β estimate = -1.35, 95% CI [-2.28, -0.42]). As shown in Table 1, pairwise analyses revealed that the pro-female advantage is not observed for the subgroup of male participants. Rather, it may result from a stronger own-gender bias among female participants than among male participants.

<footnote><sup>a</sup> Negative β estimates mean lesser likelihood of favoring the subordinate in Condition 1 than in Condition 2 and positive β estimates mean greater likelihood of favoring the subordinate in Condition 1 than in Condition 2. Rows in bold font are those in which the difference between conditions is significant (i.e., confidence intervals do not include 0).</footnote>

<footnote><sup>b</sup> BF<sub>10</sub> > 3 are considered good evidence for the alternative hypothesis. BF<sub>01</sub> > 3 good evidence for the null hypothesis.</footnote>
When comparing the two mixed-gender conditions (F > M and M > F), both girls and boys favored their gender but this tendency was more pronounced among girls (β estimate = -1.91; 95% CI [-2.61, -1.2], BF₁₀ = 5838) than among boys (β estimate = 0.99; 95% CI [0.35, 1.68], BF₁₀ = 4.07). Moreover, girls were more influenced than boys by the gender constitution of the dyad. Overall, girls allocated more resources to the power position associated with the character of their gender in mixed-gender conditions (i.e., the dominant in F > M and the subordinate in M > F), as compared to their distributions to the character of the same position in same-gender conditions. More specifically, there was a substantial increase in the likelihood of conferring an advantage to the dominant in the F > M condition compared to the same-gender conditions (F > F: BF₁₀ = 4.26 and M > M: BF₁₀ = 7.79) and to the subordinate in the M > F condition compared to the same-gender conditions (F > F: BF₁₀ = 3.7 and M > M: BF₁₀ = 5.02). Unlike girls, boys' decisions to favor a specific power position remained constant between same-gender and mixed-gender conditions (all BF₀₁'s > 2.5 and all BF₀₁ < 0.4). Further information about the interaction between gender and condition is available in the Supplementary Material (Table S2.3). These results provide partial support for the hypothesis of an own-gender favoritism (H2) and suggest that the overall pro-female bias is due to stronger own-gender favoritism among girls than among boys.

Notably, gender of participants did not influence the broader shift in attitudes toward power with age, as evidenced by the lack of statistical significance in the interactions between Age, Condition and Gender. In other words, notwithstanding the tendency to favor the own-gender character in mixed-gender conditions (for example girls' tendency to favor the female character in M > F and F > M), children from each condition similarly showed a significant age-related progression from favoring the dominant at 3-4 years old to favoring the subordinate at 7-8 years old. In conclusion, the resource allocation task's results fully contradicted the pro-male hypothesis (H1) and they partially supported both H2 and H3. Indeed, an own-gender favoritism predicted by H2 was evident, especially for female participants. However,

the own-gender favoritism did not override the influence of characters' power positions on children's distributive decisions according to their age group (H3).

## Children's justifications in the resource allocation task

In this task, the inter-code reliability was 94.86%. A total of 38.97% of responses were coded as irrelevant. The rate of irrelevant answers significantly decreased with age (3- to 4-year-olds: 71.82%; 5- to 6-year-olds 28.44%; 7- to 8-year-olds: 16.59%; $X^2$ (2, N=662)=155.99, *p* < .001; Cramer's V=0.485). The responses of seven children fell into two relevant categories. Among the relevant responses (see Supplementary Material, Table S3), 86.88% of children's justification (n=351) referred to power asymmetry: 27.23% justified favoring the dominant (i.e., "maintaining asymmetry") and 59.65% justified favoring the subordinate (i.e., "compensating for the asymmetry"). The proportions of justifications falling into these categories were similar in both same-gender and mixed-gender conditions. However, power-related justifications increased with age (3- to 4-year-olds: 67.75%; 5- to 6-year-old: 86.96%; 7- to 8-year-old: 92.90%; $X^2$ (2, N=404)=26.61, *p* < .001; Cramer's V=0.257). The remaining relevant justifications concerned attraction to interactants' characteristics (7.18%) and gender (5.94%), the latter being only observed in mixed-gender conditions.

## Playmate preference task

We excluded 3.36% of children (n = 22) who did not make a choice and responded with “both,” “none” or “I don’t know.” Similar to the resource distribution task, Age Group emerged as a significant factor in the logistic regression model. The 3- to 4-year-old children were significantly less likely than 5- to 6-year-old children to choose a subordinate as a playmate (β estimate = -1.20, 95% CI = [-2.09, -0.34], BF₁₀ = 3.07; see Figure 3). However, in contrast to the resource distribution task, the difference

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 3** Proportion of children preferring to play with the subordinate by participant gender, age-group, and condition.</figcaption></figure>
<table><caption>Table 2 Pairwise comparisons of condition × gender interaction effects in the playmate preference task.</caption><thead><tr><th>Gender</th><th>Condition 1</th><th>Condition 2</th><th>β Estimate<sup>a</sup></th><th>95% CI</th><th>BF<sub>10</sub></th><th>BF<sub>01</sub></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="5">Female participants</td><td>M > M (75.32%)</td><td>F > F (64.86%)</td><td>0.64</td><td>[-0.12,1.4]</td><td></td><td>2.16</td></tr><tr><td>M > M</td><td>F > M</td><td><strong>1.59</strong></td><td><strong>[0.79,2.36]</strong></td><td><strong>214.21<sup>b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>M > M</td><td>M > F</td><td>-0.76</td><td>[-1.65, 0.77]</td><td></td><td>1.69</td></tr><tr><td>F > F</td><td>F > M</td><td><strong>0.94</strong></td><td><strong>[0.2,1.7]</strong></td><td><strong>1.81</strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>F > F</td><td>M > F</td><td><strong>-1.4</strong></td><td><strong>[-2.28, -0.52]</strong></td><td><strong>20.61<sup>b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="5">Male participants</td><td>F > M (38.36%)</td><td>M > F (86.11%)</td><td><strong>-2.35</strong></td><td><strong>[-3.22; -1.44]</strong></td><td><strong>7.8.10<sup>3b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>M > M (56.58%)</td><td>F > F (55.26%)</td><td>-0.08</td><td>[-077,0.61]</td><td></td><td>13.24<sup>b</sup></td></tr><tr><td>M > M</td><td>F > M</td><td><strong>-1.64</strong></td><td><strong>[-2.48, -0.83]</strong></td><td><strong>126.99<sup>b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>M > M</td><td>M > F</td><td><strong>0.97</strong></td><td><strong>[0.28, 1.69]</strong></td><td><strong>3.48<sup>b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>F > F</td><td>F > M</td><td><strong>-1.57</strong></td><td><strong>[-2.4, -0.74]</strong></td><td><strong>93.10<sup>b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>F > F</td><td>M > F</td><td><strong>1.05</strong></td><td><strong>[0.32, 1.74]</strong></td><td><strong>3.77<sup>b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>F > M (85.71%)</td><td>M > F (32.43%)</td><td><strong>2.62</strong></td><td><strong>[1.81, 3.27]</strong></td><td><strong>2.9.10<sup>5b</sup></strong></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

between 7- to 8-year-old children and 5- to 6-year-old children was not significant (β estimate = 0.85, 95% CI = [-0.18,1.91], BF₁₀ = 0.72). Specifically, while 3- to 4-year-old children were not significantly more likely to prefer the dominant character (β estimate = -0.07; 95% CI [-0.39;0.25]), the children in the middle age group were significantly more likely to prefer the subordinate character (β estimate = 0.57; 95% CI [0.242; 0.891]) as were the 7- to 8-year-old children (β estimate = 1.13; 95% CI [0.73; 1.54]). A primary conclusion of this analysis is therefore that a positive attitude toward the subordinate character arises earlier than in the resource distribution task, since it is already present in 5- to 6-year-old children.

The Gender × Condition interaction was also significant in the model (male vs. female participants in F > M: β estimate = 4.04, 95%; CI [2.64, 5.54]) (see Figure 3). Pairwise analyses for this interaction, showed that in mixed-gender conditions children are more likely to choose the character of the same gender as themselves: boys were *more likely* to prefer the subordinate in F > M than in M > F (β estimate = 2.62; 95% CI [1.81; 3.57], BF₁₀ = 2.9.10⁵) and girls were *more likely* to prefer the dominant in F > M than in M > F (β estimate = -2.35; 95% CI [-3.22; -1.44], BF₁₀ = 7.8.10³). Children also chose the character of their gender as a playmate significantly more in mixed-gender conditions than the character of the same power position in same-gender conditions with one exception for female participants who did not prefer the subordinate character more in M > F than in M > M (see Table 2). This result is similar to the own-gender bias found for girls in the resource distribution task, but it is now evident in both boys and girls. An additional unplanned analysis using McNemar test compared the own-gender bias across both tasks and showed that children were more likely to favor the character of their gender in the playmate preference task than in the resource distribution task $χ^2$ (1, N = 294) = 6.31, p = .012.

Finally, unlike the resource allocation task, the Playmate preference task showed a simple effect of participant's gender by which girls were more likely than boys to prefer the subordinate character (β estimate = -1.55; 95% CI [-2.09; -0.34]). Pairwise analyses of Gender × Condition interaction show that this gender

difference is true for the condition M > M, which is taken as a reference modality in the model (β estimate = 1.06; 95% CI [0.30; 1.81]; BF₁₀ = 6.37) but not for the condition F > F (β estimate = 0.34; 95% CI [-0.40; 1.06]; BF₁₀ = .13; see Tables S3.3 and S3.4 in Supplementary Material).

## Children's justifications in the playmate preference task

In this task, the inter-coder reliability was 93.90%. Thirty-eight point fifty-four percent of the justifications were coded as irrelevant, a proportion similar to that observed in the distribution task. The responses of twelve children fell into two relevant categories. Relevant responses are presented by category and sub-category in Supplementary Material (Table S5). Eighty-nine responses were coded in the “gender” category, that is more than 3 times as many as in the resource allocation task (20.65% of relevant responses). The rate of references to the “attraction” category was almost twice as high (13.09%). However, reference to the power relationship remained the most frequently used category (63.22%) with a large majority in favor of “compensating for asymmetry.” Moreover, while playing cards could create a competitive context that might encourage choosing the subordinate character, only 12 children (i.e., 3.02% of relevant responses) justified their choice by suggesting they could prevail by taking advantage of the subordinate.

## Discussion

The primary goal of the current study was to investigate children's attitudes toward gendered power through a resource allocation task. We systematically manipulated gender by exposing both female and male participants to same-gender and mixed-gender power relationships. This approach allowed us to examine whether children's allocations favored male power (H1), their own gender (H2), or were primarily based on the characters' power position (H3).

<footnote><sup>a</sup> Negative β estimates mean lesser likelihood of favoring the subordinate in Condition 1 than in Condition 2 and positive β estimates mean greater likelihood of favoring the subordinate in Condition 1 than in Condition 2. Rows in bold font are those in which the difference between conditions is significant (i.e., confidence intervals do not include 0).</footnote>

<footnote><sup>b</sup> BF10 > 3 are considered good evidence for the alternative hypothesis. BF01 > 3 good evidence for the null hypothesis.</footnote>
# Developmental shift in resource allocation

Overall, the results replicated the developmental pattern of resource allocation previously reported in power situations involving same-gender characters (Charafeddine et al., 2016; Cheng et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2021). In both same-gender and mixed-gender conditions of our study, 3- to 4-year-old children favored the dominant character, 5-6-year-old children were at chance, and 7- to 8-year-old children favored the subordinate. The similar age-related pattern observed for same-gender and mixed-gender conditions supports H3. Even when mechanisms linked to gender representation (i.e., pro-male or own-gender biases) are likely to be activated, children's evaluations remain primarily shaped by the character's power position: younger children tended to endorse the asymmetry, and older children tended to compensate for it. Furthermore, children's justifications in mixed-gender conditions closely resembled those in same-gender conditions, focusing on power asymmetry and rarely mentioning gender (only 24 participants did so, i.e., 5.94% of the relevant justifications).

Regarding the specific case of same-gender conditions, participants exhibited a similar allocation pattern when presented with female (F > F) and male (M > M) stimuli, a comparison not previously analyzed in earlier studies. Moreover, we also found no significant difference between girls' and boys' allocations in same-gender conditions. The absence of participants' gender difference was previously observed but in studies including only the M > M situation (Charafeddine et al., 2016; Cheng et al., 2021).

Overall, the allocation pattern observed in this study suggests that between the ages of 5 and 7, children develop negative attitudes toward monopolizing decision-making. This trend reflects typical age-related differences in fairness and sensitivity to equality (McAuliffe et al., 2017), as well as in attitudes toward hierarchy (Hawley, 1999). Indeed, while young children are more likely to tolerate coercive strategies for gaining dominance, school-age children increasingly view such strategies as less acceptable and instead value prosocial pathways to power (Hawley, 1999). In the following sections, we will discuss how gender-specific mechanisms do, or do not, affect children's distributions.

## No pro-male bias

The results from mixed-gender conditions indicate that our sample of French children did not allocate more stickers to the dominant male character (M > F) compared to the dominant female character (F > M). The results revealed instead an overall effect in favor of the dominant female character in mixed-gender conditions. This clearly contradicts H1 and suggests that children did not consider male power as more legitimate than female power. Although previous studies have consistently shown that children are aware of male power in female-male interactions (Charafeddine et al., 2020; Mandalaywala et al., 2020; Reyes-Jaquez & Koenig, 2022; Santhanagopalan et al., 2022), this awareness did not lead them to favor male power. Even among the oldest participants, where awareness of male power is more prevalent (Santhanagopalan et al., 2022), powerful males were given no advantage over powerful females. In other words, the descriptive dimension of the male-power associations did not translate into a prescriptive dimension.

The absence of a pro-male advantage aligns with previous research where children had the possibility to intervene against a resource inequality between a girl and a boy. For instance, in Corbit et al. (2021), children had comparable interventions against gender pay inequality whether it favored males or females.

## Own-gender favoritism

While the results showed no pro-male bias, participants did take gender into account in their distributions. In mixed-gender conditions, children allocated more resources to the character of their own gender than to that of the other gender. This result is in line with research showing that children attribute more resources to own-gender characters in non-relational contexts (Halim et al., 2017; Renno & Shutts, 2015). However, this own-gender favoritism did not override the sensitivity to power position. If own-gender bias were the sole factor with significant influence in mixed-gender conditions, then younger and older girls would have favored both dominant and subordinate girls equally, and the same would apply to boys in these conditions. This is not what we found, as in mixed-gender conditions, the youngest age group allocated more stickers to same-gender dominants, and fewer to same-gender subordinates, than the oldest age group. Our results indicate thus that both mechanisms, sensitivity to power position (H3) and own-gender favoritism (H2), influenced children's responses.

The own-gender favoritism observed here contrasts with the results of Corbit et al. (2021), who also employed an allocation task in the context of gender inequality. In their task, male and female participants equally corrected a pay inequality between a boy and a girl, regardless of their own gender. One difference with their study is that in the present experiment, gender was more salient. We explicitly mentioned gender categories by referring to the characters by their gender ("girl," "boy") before and during the dialogue. In Corbit et al.'s study, the gender of the characters was conveyed through their pictures and their names, but the labels "girl" and "boy" were never employed. The explicit reference to gender categories might have facilitated the activation of the positive view of one's own gender by making more salient the identification of children to their gender category (Charafeddine et al., 2020). In addition, in Corbit et al.'s study, the inequality presented to participants did not result from the individual actions of the characters or their behavior toward each other. Instead, it was solely established by a classroom manager who was in charge of distributing resources between a boy and a girl, both of whom had done "a great job." In this context, creating an inequality between two characters who appear equally deserving may be perceived as particularly unfair and arbitrary. This aspect might have minimized children's bias toward their own gender more than in our task, where the inequality stems from a relational dynamic between characters.

Another aspect of the own-gender favoritism observed here is that it was more prominent among girls compared to boys. Specifically, the comparison between same-gender and mixed-gender conditions showed that girls, on average, systemically allocated more resources to a position (subordinate or dominant) when it was occupied by a female in relation with a male (F > M and M > F) than to the equivalent position in same-gender conditions. In particular, girls gave more to a female subordinate to a male than to a female subordinate to another female; they also gave more to a female exercising power over a male than to
a female exercising power over another female (see Table 1). In contrast, for boys, differences between mixed- and same-gender conditions never turned out to be statistically significant (see Table 1); own-gender favoritism only emerged when comparing the two mixed-gender conditions (F > M vs. M > F). Additionally, in mixed-gender conditions, girls favored the individual of their own gender more than boys did, as shown by the difference in Bayes factors. The greater own-gender favoritism observed in girls than in boys likely accounts for the pro-female advantage found in the allocation task.

This pattern echoes findings in which girls consistently show a stronger preference for their own gender in implicit attitude tests (Cvencek et al., 2011; Dunham et al., 2016), and sometimes in explicit tests (Cvencek et al., 2011; Halim et al., 2017; but see Dunham et al., 2016). This difference has been attributed to early emerging gender stereotypes associating positive traits with females (e.g., nice, Bian et al., 2017) and negative traits with males (e.g., bad, Heyman, 2001), as well as to early positive attitude toward one's mother that tend to generalize to the female gender (Cvencek et al., 2011). In the same vein, girls' stronger own-gender favoritism might stem from socialization experiences in which they are more frequently rewarded for compliance and attentiveness in school settings, whereas boys are more often disciplined (Lievore & Triventi, 2023). Girls may thus view boys as more disruptive or less well-behaved, leading them to favor their own gender.

An anonymous reviewer also suggested that chivalric ideology may contribute to greater positive attitudes toward females (Feldman Hall et al., 2016; Glick & Fiske, 1996). According to this perspective, males are expected to favor and protect females over other males, aligning with the heroism=male vs. vulnerability=female dichotomy. Consistent with this view, research has shown that by age six, children tend to associate the female gender with vulnerability and the male gender with heroism (Gutierrez et al., 2020).

Finally, own-gender favoritism was more pronounced in the playmate preference task than in the resource distribution task, and this pattern was equally evident in boys and girls. Overall children were also more likely to justify their preferences by invoking gender (20.65% of the relevant explanations in the preference task against 5.94% in the allocation task). It is not surprising that, at this age, children prefer a same-gender peer as a playmate, as they predominantly play in same-gender groups or dyads (Leman & Lam, 2008). However, it is worth noting that the own-gender effect in this task did not preclude power-driven preferences. Starting from 5-years-old, children across all conditions showed an increased preference for playing with the subordinate character. However, the inclination toward the subordinate manifests earlier than observed in the resource distribution task. Another notable difference between the tasks is the emergence of strategic reasoning in the preference question: some children expressed a desire to be paired with more compliant partners who are less likely to impose their will in the event of conflict. This broader range of considerations likely accounts for the earlier developmental shift toward favoring the subordinate in the preference task.

## Limitations and future directions

Overall, the results appear to diverge from adult research showing adherence to prescriptive norms whereby males should be dominant (Rudman et al., 2013). It cannot be excluded that this discrepancy stems from task-specific factors that may have

influenced how children responded in this context. In particular, one limitation of the current study is that it focuses on interactions between childlike characters of the same age as the participants. However, the legitimacy of gendered power may be more salient in contexts involving adult figures, where asymmetrical social roles are more institutionalized, and legitimized by cultural practices related to occupational status or family responsibilities. Children may perceive that adults have greater responsibilities and decision-making roles, leading to legitimate gender hierarchies that do not exist in a child's world. Furthermore, fathers tend to adopt more authoritarian parenting styles than mothers (Yaffe, 2023), which may also influence children's attitudes toward adult figures of male power. Although for descriptive stereotypes research reports similar findings between adult and child stimuli (Alto & Mandalaywala, 2023), further investigation is needed to determine whether this holds true for prescriptive stereotypes and attitudes toward gendered power.

Moreover, the scenario used in the task may have elicited prosocial attitudes that overrode children's potential inegalitarian tendencies. In particular, the interactions presented to the participants involve playful activities, which are likely to evoke notions of equality, cooperation, and reciprocity (e.g., playing the same game together). It could thus be useful to consider non-playful situations where the ability to make a good decision plays a central role. If such situations elicit less negative attitudes toward the powerful among older children, they may allow evaluative judgments to be shaped by representations of gender hierarchy.

Also relevant to this point, our study focused on only one form of power—namely, decision-making power, and more specifically one in which a character imposes their will peacefully but arbitrarily (i.e., without negotiation or justification). Yet, power can manifest in various ways (Gülgöz & Gelman, 2017). Prior research on children's expectations regarding gender and power has found no evidence that framing power in terms of merit or prosocial intent weakens its association with male figures (Helmlinger et al., under review; Reyes-Jaquez & Koenig, 2022). Nonetheless, the way power is expressed may still influence how children evaluate it in relation to gender. For example, in line with literature with adults, overt ways of claiming power may be more sanctioned for girls and women than for boys and men (see Williams & Tiedens, 2016).

Another issue is that resource allocation may not be the best way to assess children's prescriptive gender norms. Such tasks may tap more into children's moral attitudes and concern for fairness, which can neutralize the influence gender stereotypes may have on their distributions. Future work may benefit from using measures of social sanctions aligning with the literature on backlash among adults (Moss-Racusin, et al., 2010). These may involve the use of a variety of indirect evaluations like judgements of niceness, competence, societal acceptance from others (see Levy et al., 1995) or expectations of social support from peers, (Vial & Cimpian, 2024) but applied to the specific case of third-party intergender power relations.

Future studies may also benefit from including older children, given that the present findings tentatively point to a potential gender-differentiated developmental shift in own-gender favoritism at later ages. This was not captured by a statistically significant interaction and should be interpreted with caution. As suggested by Figure 2, contrary to the 3-4- and the 5-6-years-old groups, girls in the oldest age group did not seem to show greater own-gender positive attitudes than boys. Moreover, while overall participants display a consistent developmental
trajectory—shifting from pro-dominant to pro-subordinate dis-
tributive decisions, in the M > F condition, boys did not show this
shift. This tendency might reflect a growing influence of societal
norms in shaping boys' attitudes toward the power of their gen-
der. Whether this constitutes a meaningful developmental shift
toward attitudes legitimizing male power remains to be tested in
studies including older participants.

Finally, it is also important to acknowledge that our study was
conducted with participants from France, where cultural support
for male power norms may be less prevalent than in other coun-
tries. While gendered power asymmetries exist across almost all
cultures, societies differ significantly in how actively they coun-
teract their effects. Gendered power dynamics can be challenged
through education policies, gender-neutral socialization and
media representation. For instance, in France gender equality
principles are integrated into the Civic and Moral Education cur-
riculum, to which all school-aged children are exposed to at least
to some degree. While gender equality policies do not necessarily
reduce children's recognition of male power in their environment,
as evidenced by similar levels of male-power association observed
in children from Lebanon, France and Norway (Charafeddine
et al., 2020), they may, however, influence the emergence of
legitimating attitudes toward gendered hierarchies. Indeed, such
policies are explicitly designed to modulate those attitudes, and
research suggests that they in fact do (Shutts et al., 2017). Cross-
cultural research should thus further investigate whether children
raised in societies where male dominance is more legitimized are
more likely to favor male power in allocation tasks. Furthermore,
children's responses to power imbalance may reflect both indi-
vidual and familial influences. Prosociality and egalitarian views
vary with children's own dominance status (Guinote et al., 2015),
and children's resource allocation tend to align with their parents'
Social Dominance Orientation (Reifen-Tagar et al., 2017). Early
intergroup biases may further be shaped by children's own SDO
and Right-Wing Authoritarianism (Ruffman et al., 2020). Future
research could usefully explore how such factors shape children's
evaluative attitudes toward gendered power.

Conclusion

Although children are regularly exposed to gender inequalities
and are aware of the prevalence of male power, our results reveal
that their evaluative attitudes were not modulated by these ste-
reotypical expectations. Across both tasks, participants were pri-
marily sensitive to the characters' power position and to whether
they shared the characters' gender. The relevance of each factor
varied slightly across tasks: children prioritized power more in the
resource distribution task and gender more in the playmate pref-
erence task. In neither task did normative expectations of male
power shape their evaluations. The stronger bias in favor of one's
own gender observed in girls compared to boys even produced
a greater overall tendency to favor female power. Finally, in line
with earlier work, older children (aged 7–8) showed an inclination
to favor the subordinate character, suggesting a robust commit-
ment to correct unfairness in power imbalances.

Web links

Pre-registration are available on OSF at: https://osf.io/4mg5f/
?view_only=0557cfc190f4404cb843f357cce85409.

Material is available on OSF at:

https://osf.io/3z8s5/files/osfstorage?view_only=a375407734d
047d88ca9489f517bf764.

**Supplementary material**

Supplementary material is available at *Child Development* online.

Data availability

Data and code are available on OSF at:

https://osf.io/ytcw5/files/osfstorage?view_only=a375407734d047d88ca9489f517bf764

Author contributions

Anna Eve Helmlinger (Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing), Alexandre Foncelle (Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Resources, Validation, Writing—review & editing), Cristina Galusca (Methodology, Resources, Visualization, Writing—review & editing), Hélène Maire (Methodology, Resources, Writing—review & editing), Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst (Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing), and Rawan Charafeddine (Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing).

Funding

This work has been carried out with the support of ANR-21-CE28
0014-01 CHILD-GAP (from the French National Research Agency)
to J.B.V.D.H.

Conflicts of interest

None declared.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Victoire Bonneau, Alice Boutros,
César Constanty, Thomas Dalhmann, Yaelle Denis, and Elodie
Munsch for data collection. We also thank our colleagues Marion
Buchy, Farha Gheurbi, Elodie Barat, Justine Epinat-Duclos, Sonia
Alouche for their assistance in preparing this study. We thank the
rectorat of Lyon, especially Mr. Garapon, for supporting our exper-
imentation in schools. Thanks to the students and parents for
making this study possible.

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