A cross-cultural investigation of children’s willingness to imitate prosocial and antisocial groups

Do children imitate even when it is costly? New insights from a novel task

Children have a proclivity to learn through faithful imitation, but the extent to which this applies under significant cost remains unclear. To address this, we investigated whether 4- to 6-year-old children (N = 97) would stop imitating to forego a desirable food reward. We presented participants with a task involving arranging marshmallows and craft sticks, with the goal being either to collect marshmallows or build a tower. Children replicated the demonstrated actions with high fidelity regardless of the goal, but retrieved rewards differently. Children either copied the specific actions needed to build a tower, prioritizing tower completion over reward; or adopted a novel convention of stacking materials before collecting marshmallows, and developed their own method to achieve better outcomes. These results suggest children's social learning decisions are flexible and context-dependent, yet that when framed by an ostensive goal, children imitated in adherence to the goal despite incurring significant material costs.

Evidence for a dual-process account of over-imitation: Children imitate anti- and prosocial models equally, but prefer prosocial models once they become aware of multiple solutions to a task

Children imitate actions that are perceivably unnecessary to achieve the instrumental goal of an action sequence, a behavior termed over-imitation. It is debated whether this behavior is based on the motivation to follow behavioral norms and affiliate with the model or whether it can be interpreted in terms of a behavioral heuristic to copy observed intentional actions without questioning the purpose of each action step. To resolve this question, we tested whether preschool-aged children (N = 89) over-imitate a prosocial model, a helper in a prior third-party moral transgression, but refuse to over-imitate an antisocial model, the perpetrator of the moral transgression. After first observing an inefficient way to extract a reward from a puzzle box from either a perpetrator or a helper, children over-imitated the perpetrator to the same degree as they over-imitated the helper. In a second phase, children were then presented the efficient solution by the respective other model, i.e. the helper or the perpetrator. Over-imitation rates then dropped in both conditions, but remained significantly higher than in a baseline condition only when children had observed the prosocial model demonstrate the inefficient action sequence and the perpetrator performed the efficient solution. In contrast, over-imitation dropped to baseline level when the perpetrator had modelled the inefficient actions and the prosocial model subsequently showed children the efficient solution. In line with a dual-process account of over-imitation, results speak to a strong initial tendency to imitate perceivably irrelevant actions regardless of the model. Imitation behavior is then adjusted according to social motivations after deliberate consideration of different options to attain the goal.

The early ontogeny of infants' imitation of on screen humans and robots

Traditionally, infants have learned how to interact with objects in their environment through direct observations of adults and peers. In recent decades these models have been available over different media, and this has introduced non-human agents to infants' learning environments. Humanoid robots are increasingly portrayed as social agents in on screen, but the degree to which infants are capable of observational learning from screen-based robots is unknown. The current study thus investigated how well 1- to 3-year-olds (N = 230) could imitate on-screen robots relative to on-screen and live humans. Participants exhibited an imitation deficit for robots that varied with age. Furthermore, the well-known video deficit did not replicate as expected, and was weak and transient relative to past research. Together, the findings documented here suggest that infants are learning from media in ways that differ from past generations, but that this new learning is nuanced when novel technologies are involved.

The Pedagogue, the Engineer, and the Friend : From Whom Do We Learn?

Humans can follow different social learning strategies, sometimes oriented toward the models' characteristics (i.e., who-strategies). The goal of the present study was to explore which who-strategy is preferentially followed in the technological context based on the models' psychological characteristics. We identified three potential who-strategies: Copy the pedagogue (a model with high theory-of-mind skills), copy the engineer (a model with high technical-reasoning skills), and copy the friend (a model with high level of prosocialness). We developed a closed-group micro-society paradigm in which participants had to build the highest possible towers. Participants began with an individual building phase. Then, they were gathered to discuss the best solutions to increase tower height. After this discussion phase, they had to make a new building attempt, followed by another discussion phase, and so forth for a total of six building phases and five discussion rounds. This methodology allowed us to create an attraction score for each participant (the more an individual was copied in a group, the greater the attraction score). We also assessed participants' theory-of-mind skills, technical-reasoning skills, and prosocialness to predict participants' attraction scores based on these measures. Results show that we learn from engineers (high technical-reasoning skills) because they are the most successful. Their attraction power is not immediate, but after they have been identified as attractors, their technique is copied irrespective of their pedagogy (theory-of-mind skills) or friendliness (prosocialness). These findings open avenues for the study of the cognitive bases of human technological culture.

(Peer) Group influence on children's prosocial and antisocial behavior

This study investigates the influence of moral ingroup versus outgroup behavior on 5- and 6-year-olds' and 8- and 9-year-olds' own moral behavior (N = 296). After minimal group assignment, children in Experiment 1 observed adult ingroup or outgroup members engaging in prosocial sharing or antisocial stealing before they themselves had the opportunity to privately donate stickers or take away stickers from others. Older children shared more than younger children, and prosocial models elicited higher sharing. Surprisingly, group membership had no effect. Experiment 2 investigated the same question using peer models. Children in the younger age group were significantly influenced by ingroup behavior, whereas older children were not affected by group membership. Additional measures reveal interesting insights into how moral ingroup and outgroup behavior affects intergroup attitudes, evaluations, and choices.

Social evaluation and imitation of prosocial and antisocial agents in infants, children, and adults

The question of whether infants prefer prosocial agents over antisocial agents is contentious. Therefore, the first goal of the present study was to replicate previous findings regarding infants' preference. The second goal was to assess whether infants are more likely to imitate a prosocial agent than an antisocial agent. We tested 9-month-old, 14-month-old, and 4-year-old children. The study used the "opening a box to get a toy" paradigm in which an animal puppet is trying unsuccessfully to open a box and is either helped by a prosocial puppet or hindered by an antisocial puppet. We presented these social events via video, and subsequently administered an imitation task. As an additional control, adults were asked to describe the videos showing the prosocial and antisocial agent. Although most adults were able to identify both agents, the three age groups of children did not prefer the prosocial agent over the antisocial agent, and were not more likely to imitate the prosocial agent. The lack of differences might be explained by methodological issues or by a lack of robustness of the effect.