On Becoming Subtle: Age and Social Rank Changes in the Use of a Facial Gesture

ZIVIN, GAIL. On Becoming Subtle: Age and Social Rank Changes in the Use of a Facial Gesture. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1977, 48, 1314-1321. Children make a facial gesture that shares some appearance and contextual settings with nonhuman primates' dominance-related threat stares. This report, using data from videotaped naturalistic interactions and peers' hierarchy rankings of 23 4to 5-year-olds and 26 7to 10-year-olds, confirms that higher-ranking children make more of these faces than lower-ranking ones (r = .15, N.S., for preschoolers; r .36, p < .05, for elementary aged). It traces 2 developmental trends that differ from nonhuman primates' distributions of threat stares: (1) children frequently direct this facial gesture to higher ranks, and (2) by elementary years, facial gestures of top-ranked children become less obvious in context and style. This last point suggests that the top older children stylistically adapt their continued indications of challenge to cultural prohibitions, while their lower-ranking peers have not yet integrated their challenges into subtle presentations. Sex differences appeared in preponderantly high rankings for males and in each sex overrating itself, but gesture frequency and increased subtlety followed rank for both sexes.