ManyBabies4: A Large-Scale, Multi-Lab, Coordinated Replication Study of Infants’ Social Evaluations

• In Event: 3-145 - ManyBabies: Bringing large-scale collaborative projects to infant development research

Integrative Statement

Evaluating others and their actions as praiseworthy or blameworthy is a fundamental aspect of human nature. In recent years, evidence has emerged to suggest that the ability to form social evaluations based on third party interactions may emerge within the first year of life, much earlier than previously thought. For example, in a seminal study by Hamlin, Wynn, and Bloom (2007), both six- and 10-month-old infants preferentially selected an agent who aided another individual by helping them achieve its goal of climbing to the top of a hill, rather than an agent who hindered the climbing individual by pushing him down the hill.

The past decade has seen both direct and conceptual replication attempts of the tendency for infants to prefer helping or otherwise good individuals over hindering or otherwise bad individuals. Although some of these replications have been successful (Scola, Holvoet, Arciszewski, & Picard, 2015; Steckler, Woo, & Hamlin, 2017), others have not (Scarf, Imuta, Colombo, & Hayne, 2012; Salvadori, et al., 2015). As with all replication failures, these failures to replicate infant social evaluation studies may reflect either that the original studies overestimated the true effect size to a greater or lesser extent, or they may stem from methodological differences between replication attempts and the original studies.

In this talk, we will present the design and pilot data from ManyBabies4, a closely organized, multi-laboratory, and standardized study aimed at replicating infants’ preference prosocial (helping) agents, over antisocial (hindering) agents. Overall, ManyBabies is a overarching project modeled off of ManyLabs in the adult literature, which engages in multi-lab replication attempts of major findings in infancy research. In ManyBabies4, we will examine both the strength of infants’ preference for prosocial individuals from 5.5 to 10.5 months of age, as well as whether various laboratory- and participant-level factors moderate this preference. Results from this study, combined with a recent meta-analysis on the topic (Margoni & Surian, 2018), may also provide insight into the effect of publication bias in this literature.

The findings from ManyBabies4 will not only provide new insight into the nature of infants’ early prosocial preferences, they will also contribute to our growing understanding of best practices for running large-scale studies with infants.

Authors

• Kiley Hamlin, University of British Columbia
  Presenting Author

• Kelsey Lucca, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jessica Sommerville, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael C. Frank, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author