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Woo BM, Liu S, Gweon H, Spelke ES. Toddlers Prefer Agents Who Help Those Facing Harder Tasks. Open Mind (Camb) 2024; 8:483-499. [PMID: 38665545 PMCID: PMC11045033 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00129] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/26/2023] [Accepted: 02/05/2024] [Indexed: 04/28/2024] Open
Abstract
Capacities to understand and evaluate others' actions are fundamental to human social life. Infants and toddlers are sensitive to the costs of others' actions, infer others' values from the costs of the actions they take, and prefer those who help others to those who hinder them, but it is largely unknown whether and how cost considerations inform early understanding of third-party prosocial actions. In three experiments (N = 94), we asked whether 16-month-old toddlers value agents who selectively help those who need it most. Presented with two agents who attempted two tasks, toddlers preferentially looked to and touched someone who helped the agent in greater need, both when one agent's task required more effort and when the tasks were the same but one agent was weaker. These results provide evidence that toddlers engage in need-based evaluations of helping, applying their understanding of action utilities to their social evaluations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brandon M. Woo
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
- The Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Shari Liu
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Hyowon Gweon
- Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
| | - Elizabeth S. Spelke
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
- The Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, Cambridge, MA, USA
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2
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Kudrnova V, Spelke ES, Thomas AJ. Infants Infer Social Relationships Between Individuals Who Engage in Imitative Social Interactions. Open Mind (Camb) 2024; 8:202-216. [PMID: 38476663 PMCID: PMC10932586 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00124] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/07/2023] [Accepted: 12/17/2023] [Indexed: 03/14/2024] Open
Abstract
Infants are born into rich social networks and are faced with the challenge of learning about them. When infants observe social interactions, they make predictions about future behavior, but it is not clear whether these predictions are based on social dispositions, social relationships, or both. The current studies (N = 188, N = 90 males) address this question in 12-month-old infants and 16- to 18-month-old toddlers who observe social interactions involving imitation. In Studies 1 and 3, infants and toddlers expected that imitators, compared to non-imitators, would respond to their social partners' distress. Likewise, they expected the targets of imitation, compared to non-targets, to respond to their partner's distress. In Study 2, these expectations did not generalize to interactions with a new partner, providing evidence that infants learned about the relationships between individuals as opposed to their dispositions. In Study 3, infants did not make predictions about responses to laughter, suggesting that infants see imitation as indicative of a specific kind of social relationship. Together, these results provide evidence that imitative interactions support infants' and toddlers' learning about the social relationships connecting unknown individuals.
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3
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Smith-Flores AS, Herrera-Guevara IA, Powell LJ. Infants expect friends, but not rivals, to be happy for each other when they succeed. Dev Sci 2024; 27:e13423. [PMID: 37312424 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13423] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/22/2022] [Revised: 05/27/2023] [Accepted: 05/31/2023] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
A friend telling you good news earns them a smile while witnessing a rival win an award may make you wrinkle your nose. Emotions arise not just from people's own circumstances, but also from the experiences of friends and rivals. Across three moderated, online looking time studies, we asked if human infants hold expectations about others' vicarious emotions and if they expect those emotions to be guided by social relationships. Ten- and 11-month-old infants (N = 154) expected an observer to be happy rather than sad when the observer watched a friend successfully jump over a wall; infants looked longer at the sad response compared to the happy response. In contrast, infants did not expect the observer to be happy when the friend failed, nor when a different, rival jumper succeeded; infants' looking times to the two emotion responses in these conditions were not reliably different. These results suggest that infants are able to integrate knowledge across social contexts to guide expectations about vicarious emotional responses. Here infants connected an understanding of agents' goals and their outcomes with knowledge of social relationships to infer an emotion response. Biased concern for friends but not adversaries is not just a descriptive feature of human relationships, but an expectation about the social world present from early in development. Further, the successful integration of these information types welcomes the possibility that infants can jointly reason about goals, emotions, and social relationships under an intuitive theory of psychology. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: 11-month-old infants use knowledge of relationships to make inferences about others' vicarious emotions. In Experiment 1 infants expected an observer to respond happily to a friend's success but not their failure. Experiments 2 and 3 varied the relationship between the observer and actor and found that infants' expectation of vicarious happiness is strongest for positive relationships and absent for negative relationships. The results may reflect an intuitive psychology in which infants expect friends to adopt concern for one another's goals and to thus experience one another's successes as rewarding.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexis S Smith-Flores
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, California, USA
| | - Isabel A Herrera-Guevara
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, California, USA
| | - Lindsey J Powell
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, California, USA
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4
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Galusca CI, Mermillod M, Dreher JC, van der Henst JB, Pascalis O. Toddlers' sensitivity to dominance traits from faces. Sci Rep 2023; 13:22292. [PMID: 38097711 PMCID: PMC10721615 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-49385-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/09/2023] [Accepted: 12/07/2023] [Indexed: 12/17/2023] Open
Abstract
In adults, seeing individual faces is sufficient to trigger dominance evaluations, even when conflict is absent. From early on, infants represent dyadic dominance relations and they can infer conflict outcomes based on a variety of cues. To date, it is unclear if toddlers also make automatic dominance trait evaluations of individual faces. Here we asked if toddlers are sensitive to dominance traits from faces, and whether their sensitivity depends on their face experience. We employed a visual preference paradigm to study 18- and 24-month-old toddlers' sensitivity to dominance traits from three types of faces: artificial, male, female. When presented with artificial faces (Experiment 1), 18- and 24-month-olds attended longer to the non-dominant faces, but only when they were in upright orientation. For real male faces (Experiment 2), toddlers showed equivalent looking durations to the dominant and non-dominant upright faces. However, when looking at female faces (Experiment 3), toddlers displayed a visual preference for the upright non-dominant faces at 24 months. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that toddlers already display sensitivity to facial cues of dominance from 18 months of age, at least for artificial face stimuli.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cristina-Ioana Galusca
- CNRS-Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition, Université Grenoble Alpes, BSHM-1251 Av Centrale|CS40700, 38058, Grenoble Cedex 9, France.
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Grenoble, France.
| | | | - Jean-Claude Dreher
- CNRS-Institut de Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod, UMR5229, Neuroeconomics, Reward, and Decision Making Laboratory; Université Claude Bernard 1, Lyon, Lyon, France
| | | | - Olivier Pascalis
- CNRS-Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition, Université Grenoble Alpes, BSHM-1251 Av Centrale|CS40700, 38058, Grenoble Cedex 9, France
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Grenoble, France
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5
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Mascaro O, Goupil N, Pantecouteau H, Depierreux A, Van der Henst JB, Claidière N. Human and animal dominance hierarchies show a pyramidal structure guiding adult and infant social inferences. Nat Hum Behav 2023; 7:1294-1306. [PMID: 37386104 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01634-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/22/2022] [Accepted: 05/17/2023] [Indexed: 07/01/2023]
Abstract
This study investigates the structure of social hierarchies. We hypothesized that if social dominance relations serve to regulate conflicts over resources, then hierarchies should converge towards pyramidal shapes. Structural analyses and simulations confirmed this hypothesis, revealing a triadic-pyramidal motif across human and non-human hierarchies (114 species). Phylogenetic analyses showed that this pyramidal motif is widespread, with little influence of group size or phylogeny. Furthermore, nine experiments conducted in France found that human adults (N = 120) and infants (N = 120) draw inferences about dominance relations that are consistent with hierarchies' pyramidal motif. By contrast, human participants do not draw equivalent inferences based on a tree-shaped pattern with a similar complexity to pyramids. In short, social hierarchies exhibit a pyramidal motif across a wide range of species and environments. From infancy, humans exploit this regularity to draw systematic inferences about unobserved dominance relations, using processes akin to formal reasoning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Olivier Mascaro
- Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center, Paris, France.
| | - Nicolas Goupil
- Institut des Sciences Cognitives-Marc Jeannerod, UMR5229, CNRS and Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Bron, France
| | | | - Adeline Depierreux
- Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center, Paris, France
| | - Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst
- Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, INSERM, Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon, U1028, UMR5292, Trajectoires, Bron, France
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6
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Woo BM, Spelke ES. Toddlers' social evaluations of agents who act on false beliefs. Dev Sci 2023; 26:e13314. [PMID: 35998080 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13314] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2022] [Revised: 08/02/2022] [Accepted: 08/09/2022] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Mature social evaluations privilege agents' intentions over the outcomes of their actions, but young children often privilege outcomes over intentions in verbal tasks probing their social evaluations. In three experiments (N = 118), we probed the development of intention-based social evaluation and mental state reasoning using nonverbal methods with 15-month-old toddlers. Toddlers viewed scenarios depicting a protagonist who sought to obtain one of two toys, each inside a different box, as two other agents observed. Then, the boxes' contents were switched in the absence of the protagonist and either in the presence or the absence of the other agents. When the protagonist returned, one agent opened the box containing the protagonist's desired toy (a positive outcome), and the other opened the other box (a neutral outcome). When both agents had observed the toys move to their current locations, the toddlers preferred the agent who opened the box containing the desired toy. In contrast, when the agents had not seen the toys move and therefore should have expected the desired toy's location to be unchanged, the toddlers preferred the agent who opened the box that no longer contained the desired toy. Thus, the toddlers preferred the agent who intended to make the protagonist's desired toy accessible, even when its action, guided by a false belief concerning that toy's location, did not produce a positive outcome. Well before children connect beliefs to social behavior in verbal tasks, toddlers engage in intention-based evaluations of social agents with false beliefs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brandon M Woo
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.,The Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
| | - Elizabeth S Spelke
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.,The Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
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7
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Saxe R. Perceiving and pursuing legitimate power. Trends Cogn Sci 2022; 26:1062-1063. [PMID: 36150968 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2022.08.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2022] [Accepted: 08/16/2022] [Indexed: 01/12/2023]
Abstract
How do people perceive and pursue legitimate power? For the social sciences, this question is venerable. Yet, for cognitive science, it offers fresh and generative opportunities to explore how adults evaluate legitimacy, how children learn to do so, and what difference legitimate power makes for people's thoughts, feelings, and actions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rebecca Saxe
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA.
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8
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Infants infer potential social partners by observing the interactions of their parent with unknown others. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2022; 119:e2121390119. [PMID: 35878009 PMCID: PMC9371719 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2121390119] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/27/2023] Open
Abstract
Infants are born into networks of individuals who are socially connected. How do infants begin learning which individuals are their own potential social partners? Using digitally edited videos, we showed 12-mo-old infants' social interactions between unknown individuals and their own parents. In studies 1 to 4, after their parent showed affiliation toward one puppet, infants expected that puppet to engage with them. In study 5, infants made the reverse inference; after a puppet engaged with them, the infants expected that puppet to respond to their parent. In each study, infants' inferences were specific to social interactions that involved their own parent as opposed to another infant's parent. Thus, infants combine observation of social interactions with knowledge of their preexisting relationship with their parent to discover which newly encountered individuals are potential social partners for themselves and their families.
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9
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Amakusa M, Meng X, Kanakogi Y. Children’s social evaluation toward prestige-based and dominance-based powerholders. BMC Res Notes 2022; 15:180. [PMID: 35570312 PMCID: PMC9107631 DOI: 10.1186/s13104-022-06072-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/17/2022] [Accepted: 05/05/2022] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
Objective Social scientists have suggested two typical ways of acquiring social power: dominance approach (gaining social power by applying violence, coercion, threat, and punishment) and prestige approach (gaining admiration and liking by demonstrating competence and sharing experience and knowledge). However, little is known about how people recognize and evaluate the differentiated process of the approaches, and even less about the early development of these processes. In the current study, 5–6-year old children heard stories about pairs comprising a dominance-based and a prestige-based powerholder, chose one of the powerholders as their friend and leader, and predicted which powerholder will gain the contested resources. Results Compared to a dominance-based powerholder, children were more likely to choose a prestige-based powerholder as a friend and leader in different situations. Moreover, children predicted that prestige-based powerholders, and not dominance-based powerholders, would gain contested resources. These findings suggest that since childhood, human beings tend to be biased to not only judge prestige-based aspects as socially preferable, but also endorse the prestige-based powerholders’ priority to possess valuable resources, which subsequently strengthens their high social status. These early childhood preferences can be instrumental in providing more harmonious environments for children in educational and daily contexts. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13104-022-06072-6.
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10
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Powell LJ. Adopted Utility Calculus: Origins of a Concept of Social Affiliation. PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2022; 17:1215-1233. [PMID: 35549492 DOI: 10.1177/17456916211048487] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
To successfully navigate their social world, humans need to understand and map enduring relationships between people: Humans need a concept of social affiliation. Here I propose that the initial concept of social affiliation, available in infancy, is based on the extent to which one individual consistently takes on the goals and needs of another. This proposal grounds affiliation in intuitive psychology, as formalized in the naive-utility-calculus model. A concept of affiliation based on interpersonal utility adoption can account for findings from studies of infants' reasoning about imitation, similarity, helpful and fair individuals, "ritual" behaviors, and social groups without the need for additional innate mechanisms such as a coalitional psychology, moral sense, or general preference for similar others. I identify further tests of this proposal and also discuss how it is likely to be relevant to social reasoning and learning across the life span.
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11
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Geraci A, Regolin L, Simion F, Surian L. Infants' preferences for approachers over repulsers shift between 4 and 8 months of age. Aggress Behav 2022; 48:487-499. [PMID: 35560230 DOI: 10.1002/ab.22033] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/25/2021] [Revised: 04/22/2022] [Accepted: 04/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Despite its adaptive value for social life, the emergence and the development of the ability to detect agents that cause aversive interactions and distinguish them from potentially affiliative agents (approachers) has not been investigated. We presented infants with a simple interaction involving two agents: one of them (the "repulser") moved toward and pushed the other (the "approacher") which reacted by simply moving toward the repulser without contacting it. We found that 8-month-olds (N = 28) looked longer at the approacher than at the repulser (Experiment 1), whereas 4-month-olds (N = 30) exhibited no preference (Experiment 2). To control for low-level cues (such as the preference for the agent that moved after the contact), two new groups of 4- and 8-month-old infants were presented with a series of interactions in which the agents inverted their social roles. Older infants (N = 30) manifested no preference for either agent (Experiment 3), while younger infants (N = 30) looked longer at the first agent to move (Experiment 4). Our results indicated that 8-month-olds' preferences for the approacher over the repulser depended on social information and were finely tuned to agents that display prosocial rather than antisocial behavior. We discuss these findings in light of the development and adaptive value of the ability to negatively evaluate repulsers, to avoid choosing them as partners.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alessandra Geraci
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science University of Trento Rovereto Italy
| | - Lucia Regolin
- Department of General Psychology University of Padova Padova Italy
| | - Francesca Simion
- Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation University of Padova Padova Italy
| | - Luca Surian
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science University of Trento Rovereto Italy
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12
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Ruba AL, McMurty R, Gaither SE, Wilbourn MP. How White American Children Develop Racial Biases in Emotion Reasoning. AFFECTIVE SCIENCE 2022; 3:21-33. [PMID: 36046098 PMCID: PMC9383007 DOI: 10.1007/s42761-022-00111-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2021] [Accepted: 02/02/2022] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
For decades, affective scientists have examined how adults and children reason about others' emotions. Yet, our knowledge is limited regarding how emotion reasoning is impacted by race-that is, how individuals reason about emotions displayed by people of other racial groups. In this review, we examine the developmental origins of racial biases in emotion reasoning, focusing on how White Americans reason about emotions displayed by Black faces/people. We highlight how racial biases in emotion reasoning, which emerge as early as infancy, likely contribute to miscommunications, inaccurate social perceptions, and negative interracial interactions across the lifespan. We conclude by discussing promising interventions to reduce these biases as well as future research directions, highlighting how affective scientists can decenter Whiteness in their research designs. Together, this review highlights how emotion reasoning is a potentially affective component of racial bias among White Americans.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ashley L. Ruba
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Waisman Center 399, 1500 Highland Avenue, Madison, WI 53705 USA
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13
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Mandalaywala TM. Do nonhuman animals reason about prestige‐based status? SOCIAL AND PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY COMPASS 2022. [DOI: 10.1111/spc3.12660] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Tara M. Mandalaywala
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences University of Massachusetts Amherst Massachusetts USA
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14
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Thomas AJ, Woo B, Nettle D, Spelke E, Saxe R. Early concepts of intimacy: Young humans use saliva sharing to infer close relationships. Science 2022; 375:311-315. [PMID: 35050656 DOI: 10.1126/science.abh1054] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/17/2023]
Abstract
Across human societies, people form "thick" relationships characterized by strong attachments, obligations, and mutual responsiveness. People in thick relationships share food utensils, kiss, or engage in other distinctive interactions that involve sharing saliva. We found that children, toddlers, and infants infer that dyads who share saliva (as opposed to other positive social interactions) have a distinct relationship. Children expect saliva sharing to happen in nuclear families. Toddlers and infants expect that people who share saliva will respond to one another in distress. Parents confirm that saliva sharing is a valid cue of relationship thickness in their children's social environments. The ability to use distinctive interactions to infer categories of relationships thus emerges early in life, without explicit teaching; this enables young humans to rapidly identify close relationships, both within and beyond families.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ashley J Thomas
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.,Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.,Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK
| | - Brandon Woo
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.,Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK
| | - Daniel Nettle
- NSF Center for Brains, Minds and Machines, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Elizabeth Spelke
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.,Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK
| | - Rebecca Saxe
- Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.,Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK
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15
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Fonn EK, Zahl JH, Thomsen L. The boss is not always right: Norwegian preschoolers do not selectively endorse the testimony of a novel dominant agent. Child Dev 2021; 93:831-844. [PMID: 34958120 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13722] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Theories of cultural evolution posit that cues of competence-based prestige, rather than formidability-based dominance, should guide culturally transmitted learning, but recent work suggested that French and Kaqchikel Guatamalan preschoolers place their epistemic trust in dominant others. In contrast, this study shows that 249 three- to six-year-olds (116 girls, tested between 2016 and 2018 across metropolitan locations with varying ethnic composition and socioeconomic status) randomly endorsed the word-labels of dominant and subordinate agents in the egalitarian culture of Norway, using stimuli which solicit dominance inferences among infants and manipulating anonymity across studies to control for egalitarian desirability bias. A meta-analysis estimated that 48% endorsed the dominant's testimony. This demonstrates that the tendency to endorse the epistemic claims of dominant individuals does not emerge reliably in early childhood.
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Affiliation(s)
- Erik Kjos Fonn
- Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
| | | | - Lotte Thomsen
- Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.,Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.,Centre for the Experimental-Philosophical Study of Discrimination, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
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16
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Abstract
How do humans intuitively understand the structure of their society? How should psychologists study people's commonsense understanding of societal structure? The present chapter seeks to address both of these questions by describing the domain of "intuitive sociology." Drawing primarily from empirical research focused on how young children represent and reason about social groups, we propose that intuitive sociology consists of three core phenomena: social types (the identification of relevant groups and their attributes); social value (the worth of different groups); and social norms (shared expectations for how groups ought to be). After articulating each component of intuitive sociology, we end the chapter by considering both the emergence of intuitive sociology in infancy as well as transitions from intuitive to reflective representations of sociology later in life.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kristin Shutts
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States.
| | - Charles W Kalish
- Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States
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17
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Cheng N, Wan Y, An J, Gummerum M, Zhu L. Power grabbed or granted: Children's allocation of resources in social power situations. J Exp Child Psychol 2021; 210:105192. [PMID: 34120092 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105192] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/09/2020] [Revised: 03/22/2021] [Accepted: 04/30/2021] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
Notwithstanding alternative ways of obtaining power, social power is mostly commonly acquired through either a dominance approach, where power is grabbed by the powerholder, or a prestige approach, where power is granted by group members. Although children's attitude toward power in the dominance situation has been studied, little is known about how children understand and distinguish different ways of obtaining power. We examined the understanding of power in children aged 4-8 years by their resource allocation behavior in two social power acquisition situations. In Study 1, 4- to 8-year-olds (N = 123) gradually shifted from distributing more to the powerholder to showing no preference for either party (in the prestige situation) or to distributing more to the subordinates (in the dominance situation) as they age. Older children (6-8 years), but not 4- and 5-year-olds, were more likely to favor the powerholders in the prestige situation than in the dominance situation. In Study 2, when power did not produce unfair results, 7- and 8-year-olds (N = 48) favored the powerholder in the prestige situation but showed no preference in the dominance situation. The results suggest that children's attitudes toward the two ways of acquiring power are gradually differentiated with age, and children's resource allocation in the power situations is influenced by the way of acquiring power and children's equity concern.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nanhua Cheng
- Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; School of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China
| | - Yingjia Wan
- Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
| | - Jing An
- Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
| | - Michaela Gummerum
- Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
| | - Liqi Zhu
- Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
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18
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Surian L, Margoni F. First steps toward an understanding of procedural fairness. Dev Sci 2020; 23:e12939. [PMID: 31971644 DOI: 10.1111/desc.12939] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/17/2018] [Revised: 12/11/2019] [Accepted: 01/14/2020] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Abstract
In four experiments, we tested whether 20-month-old infants are sensitive to violations of procedural impartiality. Participants were shown videos in which help was provided in two different ways. A main character provided help to two other agents either impartially, by helping them at the same time, or in a biased way, by helping one agent almost immediately while the other after a longer delay. Infants looked reliably longer at the biased than at the unbiased help scenarios despite the fact that in both scenarios help was provided to each beneficiary. This suggests that human infants can attend to departures from impartiality and, in their second year, they already show an initial understanding of procedural fairness.
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Affiliation(s)
- Luca Surian
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy
| | - Francesco Margoni
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy
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