Infants' Sensitivity to the Positive and Negative Values of Moral Actions

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Moral Development

Abstract

Preverbal infants make a social evaluation of others based on social interactions. For instance, after being habituated to helping, hindering, and neutral actions, 6- and 10-month-olds preferred the helper to the neutral agent and preferred the neutral agent to the hinderer in a choice task in which they were given a chance to reach for either of two agents (Hamlin et al., 2007). Recent research suggests that 6- and 10-month-old infants are sensitive to the negativity of hindering actions but not to the positivity of helping actions when inferring a third-party’s disposition. In a violation-of-expectation paradigm, 6- and 10-month-old infants looked reliably longer when an agent approached a hinderer rather than a neutral agent but showed no different looking times at the events in which an agent approached a helper or a neutral agent (Chae & Song, 2018). The result is consistent with the negativity bias, a phenomenon in which negative stimuli evoke stronger reactions than positive ones (e.g., Baumeister et al., 2001). The current study examined whether such negativity bias remains the same or changes over development. It is possible that infants initially show negativity bias and then become able to distinguish both positive and negative events from neutral ones when inferring other’s preferences. Such a development direction has been reported in a task that measured infants’ own preferences toward agents (Hamlin et al., 2010). We tested older infants – 12- to 17-month-olds – in a violation-of-expectation paradigm similar to that of Chae and Song (2018). The infants were first familiarized with helping, hindering, or neutral events. In the helping and hindering events, an agent either helped or hindered a circle from climbing up a hill. In the neutral events, the circle remained still in the middle-upper part of the scene while the neutral agent followed the helper or hinderer’s path, making it clear that there was no interaction between the agents. During the test event, including a new physical situation without a hill, the infants watched the circle approach the helper, hinderer, or the neutral agent. As a result, infants showed different looking times at the test events in which the circle approached the neutral agent and at the events in which the circle approached the helper or hinderer. More specifically, the infants (1) looked reliably longer when the circle approached the neutral agent rather than the helper, and (2) looked longer when the circle approached the hinderer rather than the neutral agent. The results suggest that infants expected the circle to approach the helper rather than the neutral agent and to approach the hinderer rather than the neutral agent. Unlike younger infants, 12- to 17-month-olds positively evaluate a helper and negatively a hinderer when inferring a third-party’s disposition. This result suggests that infants are initially sensitive to the negativity but not to the positivity of others’ actions, and then they become sensitive to both the positivity and negativity of moral actions over development when inferring others’ preferences.

Authors

• Yomyong Cha, Yonsei University
  Presenting Author

• Chae-rin Park, Yonsei University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hyun-Joo Song, Yonsei University
  Non-Presenting Author