3-229 - Inferring social traits from non-behavioral characteristics in infancy.

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

The clearest evidence of a person’s underlying social disposition comes from directly observing how they behave towards others. However, in our everyday lives we frequently depend on indirect evidence to evaluate, in advance, how someone might behave. For example, adults automatically infer a person’s social disposition based upon how they look and sound (e.g., Rule & Ambady, 2008; Todorov et al., 2008). What are the developmental origins of this powerful bias? The proposed paper symposium will address this question by presenting convergent work using a diverse array of methods.

Paper 1 reports 7-months-olds’ sensitivity to the facial properties associated with trustworthiness judgments in adults. Using an innovative ERP methodology they describe how infants’ perception of trustworthiness occurs even without conscious awareness (e.g., even when the stimuli are presented subliminally). Paper 2 reports that infants not only perceive facial trustworthiness but actively use such features to infer whether characters will actually engage in positive or negative social behaviours towards others. Paper 3 describes how this type of trait inference is also supported by perceived language differences. For example, 8-month-old infants expect speakers of a familiar language to engage in prosocial actions towards others.

Together, these papers will present a wide range of methods (ERPs, preferential looking, preferential crawling, visual habituation, violation-of-expectation) that converge on a cohesive argument in favor of infants’ ability to infer social traits from non-behavioural characteristics, such as facial appearance and language. An expert on social biases and group membership in early development will act as a discussant.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Erik Cheries, UMass Amherst

Discussant

• Katherine Kinzler, Cornell University

Individual Presentations

• The Perception of Facial Trustworthiness in Infancy - Presenting Author: Sarah Jessen, University of Luebeck; Tobias Grossmann, University of Virginia

• Infants’ and toddlers’ face-based judgments of trustworthy behavior - Presenting Author: Erik Cheries, UMass Amherst; Ashley Lyons, University of Massachusetts Amherst

• Who will be nice and who will be mean?: Infants’ expectations of social group behaviour. - Presenting Author: Anthea Pun, University of British Columbia; Kiley Hamlin, University of British Columbia; Andrew Scott Baron, University of British Columbia