Inferences drawn from moral actions in infants and children

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Research suggests that infants can distinguish the valences of others’ actions, prefer a prosocial over an antisocial individual, and expect others to adhere to the sociomoral principles of fairness, harm-avoidance, ingroup support, and authority (e.g., Premack & Premack, 1997; Hamlin et al., 2007; Ting et al., 2020). We build on these findings and aim to assess the depth and breadth of the inferences made by infants and children upon viewing an individual perform a morally-laden action. In four papers, we present new evidence suggesting that these inferences encompass both the moral and non-moral domains, and extend to members of the individual’s group.
Paper 1 found that infants no longer expect an individual who violated the harm-avoidance principle to act fairly when distributing resources, and find it unexpected when the harm-doer or her ingroup acted kindly by going above and beyond what is obligated of them. Paper 2 provided converging and novel evidence, suggesting that infants expect an unfair individual to hinder, rather than help, another. Paper 3 showed that these early inferences extend to epistemic and economic trust: Infants and children are more likely to trust a leader who exerted respect-based power than a bully who exerted fear-based power. Paper 4 presented preliminary findings suggesting that upon viewing a series of actions with inconsistent moral valence, infants may aptly prefer a more helpful over a less helpful individual.
Together, these results paint a picture of early sociomoral cognition that is rich, flexible, and integrated with early reasoning in other domains.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chair

• Fransisca Ting, University of Toronto

Individual Presentations

• Toddlers Draw Moral Character Inferences about an Antisocial Individual and Her Group - Presenting Author: Fransisca Ting, University of Toronto; Peipei Setoh, Nanyang Technological University; Melody Buyukozer Dawkins, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Olivia Spence; Renee Baillargeon, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Does Knowledge of Prior Moral Behaviour Influence Infants’ Expectations of Future Moral Behaviour? - Presenting Author: Inderpreet Kaur Gill, University of Toronto; Jessica A Sommerville, University of Toronto

• How is Children’s Epistemic and Interpersonal Trust Linked to Their Perception of Social Power? - Presenting Author: Luca Surian, University of Trento; Francesco Margoni, Universitetet i Stavanger

• Infants’ Expectations and Evaluations of Agents Who Inconsistently Help and Hinder Others - Presenting Author: Chiu Kin Adrian Tsang, University of British Columbia (UBC); Brandon Matthew Woo, Harvard University; J. Kiley Hamlin, University of British Columbia (UBC)