Developmental research suggests that young children tend to value dominant individuals over subordinates. This research, however, has nearly exclusively been carried out in Western cultures, and cross-cultural research among adults has revealed cultural differences in the valuing of dominance. In particular, it seems that Japanese culture, relative to many Western cultures, values dominance less. We conducted two experiments to test whether this difference would be observed in preschoolers. In Experiment 1, preschoolers in France and in Japan were asked to identify with either a dominant or a subordinate. French preschoolers identified with the dominant, but Japanese preschoolers were at chance. Experiment 2 revealed that Japanese preschoolers were more likely to believe a subordinate than a dominant individual, both compared to chance and compared to previous findings among French preschoolers. The convergent results from both experiments thus reveal an early emerging cross-cultural difference in the valuing of dominance.

发展研究表明，幼儿往往比下属更重视优势个人。但是，这项研究几乎完全是在西方文化中进行的，成年人之间的跨文化研究表明，在支配地位的评估中存在文化差异。尤其是，相对于许多西方文化，日本文化似乎更不重视优势。我们进行了两个实验，以测试这种差异是否会在学龄前儿童中观察到。在实验1中，法国和日本的学龄前儿童被要求确定是优势还是下属。法国的学龄前儿童是最主要的，但日本的学龄前儿童是偶然的。实验2显示，日本学龄前儿童比强势个体更相信下属，两者均与法国学龄前儿童的机会进行了比较，并与以前的发现进行了比较。因此，两个实验的收敛结果揭示了在主导地位评估方面出现的早期跨文化差异。