The Influence of Maternal Socialization on Infants’ Social Evaluation in Two Cultures

Twelve months old infants' evaluation of observed comforting behavior using a choice paradigm: The role of animacy cues and self-distress

Comforting is a prosocial behavior that children start to engage in around their second year of life. There is much less known about their ability to evaluate comforting behavior of others. The current study examined whether 12 months old infants, after having watched animated abstract characters comfort or ignore a third party in distress, would show a preference for the comforting character. Using a manual choice paradigm, we found that infants were more likely to choose the comforting character than the ignoring character (Experiment 1). When the characters however lacked human surface features (eyes) infants did not show a preference (Experiment 2). Furthermore, infants self-distress during the watching of the animations did not prevent infants to evaluate the behavior of the observed characters. These findings support the idea of an early presence of "moral sense" in infancy.

Emotion or Evaluation: Cultural Differences in the Parental Socialization of Moral Judgement

Moral reasoning develops rapidly in early childhood. Recent evidence from cognitive neuroscience literature suggests that the development of moral reasoning is supported by an integration of cognitive and affective components. However, the role of culture in the development of moral reasoning in young children is under-investigated. Previous cross-cultural research suggests that culture shapes how people interpret other's behaviors. In particular, people raised in independent cultures, such as the United States, tend to form impressions of others and attribute others' behaviors to their personal dispositions more quickly than people raised in interdependent cultures, such as Japan. In the present cross-cultural study, we examined parents' discourse with children in Japan and the United States. Parents and their 3- to 4-year-old children were asked to view and discuss cartoon characters depicting prosocial and antisocial acts. Results indicated that in both cultures, parents discussed about moral actions (e.g., helping, harming) of characters. Furthermore, United States parents were more likely to evaluate dispositional characteristics of characters based on their pro-social and anti-social acts, whereas Japanese parents were more likely to refer to emotion of the characters who got hurt. We discuss implications of cross-cultural differences and similarities in parental moral socialization and the development of moral reasoning in young children.

Cultural Similarities and Differences in Explaining Others’ Behavior in 4- to 9-Year-Old Children From Three Cultural Contexts

Previous studies suggest that people from the Western hemisphere tend to explain others’ behavior based on a person’s traits and dispositions, while participants from non-Western cultural settings more likely refer to situational factors. From a developmental perspective, it has been suggested that culture-specific modes of explaining behavior gradually emerge during late childhood and adolescence. The present study explored whether traces of a corresponding culture-specific development can be found at earlier ages when using simplified assessments. In total, 438 children between 4 and 9 years old from Münster (urban Germany), Kyoto (urban Japan), and Cotacachi (rural Ecuador), were asked to explain positive and deviant behaviors of children depicted in simple picture-based vignettes. While more internal attributions were given in Münster than in Kyoto and Cotacachi children at 4 to 5 years old, these cultural differences disappeared as internal attributions significantly increased with age in Kyoto and Cotacachi but not Münster children. Analyzing children’s explanations on a level of subcategories revealed more subtle cultural specificities. For example, when giving internal explanations, Cotacachi children focused on stable traits, while Münster children emphasized individual desires and Kyoto children highlighted more volatile aspects. Cross-cultural differences in children’s social explanations could partially be explained by mothers’ preference for autonomy-related socialization goals. Taken together, this study provides evidence for an earlier onset of internal explanations when they are culturally accentuated and further calls for a more nuanced approach to capture culture-specific meaning systems reflected in everyday social explanations.

The development of temperament and maternal perception of child: A cross-cultural examination in the United States and Japan

Previous research shows cross-cultural differences in adult personality and child temperament, yet the developmental origin of these cultural differences remains unclear. To understand a potential role of socialization grounded in cultural values, this study investigated culturally specific maternal perceptions of child and children's development of temperament in the U.S. and Japan. Maternal perception of child was assessed via maternal interview in the U.S. (n = 42) and Japan (n = 40). Six months after the interview, child's temperament was assessed. Cross-cultural differences in maternal perception of child and child's temperament, and the relation between the two were analyzed. US-American infants scored higher on the surgency/extraversion trait than Japanese infants, whereas Japanese infants scored higher on the negative affectivity/neuroticism trait than US-American infants. US-American mothers used more positive evaluation and private/autonomy descriptions of their infants, whereas Japanese mothers used more negative evaluation and context-specific descriptions of their infants by making references to other people, time, or location. Child's negative affectivity trait was closely related to maternal perception of child's social/context characteristics and negative evaluations. The findings provide support for the socio-cultural framework of temperament development and suggest an important consideration of cultural factors when designing educational and parenting programs.

Cultural Similarities and Differences in the Development of Sociomoral Judgments: An Eye-Tracking Study

People integrate the valence of behavior and that of outcome when making moral judgments. However, the role of culture in the development of this integration among young children remains unclear. We investigated cultural similarities and differences in moral judgments by measuring both visual attention and verbal evaluations. Three- and four-year-olds from Japan and the U.S. (N = 141) were shown sociomoral scenarios that varied in agents' behavior which reflected prosocial or antisocial intention and recipients' emotional outcome (happy, neutral, or sad); then, they were asked to evaluate agents' moral trait. Their eye fixations while observing moral scenarios were measured using an eye-tracker. We found culturally similar tendencies in the integration of behavior and outcome; however, a cultural difference was shown in their verbal evaluation. The link between implicit attention and explicit verbal evaluation was negligible. Both culturally shared and specific aspects of sociomoral development are discussed.

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.

Do 15-month-old infants prefer helpers? A replication of Hamlin et al. (2007)

Hamlin et al. found in 2007 that preverbal infants displayed a preference for helpers over hinderers. The robustness of this finding and the conditions under which infant sociomoral evaluation can be elicited has since been debated. Here, we conducted a replication of the original study, in which we tested 14- to 16-month-olds using a familiarization procedure with three-dimensional animated video stimuli. Unlike previous replication attempts, ours uniquely benefited from detailed procedural advice by Hamlin. In contrast with the original results, only 16 out of 32 infants (50%) in our study reached for the helper; thus, we were not able to replicate the findings. A possible reason for this failure is that infants' preference for prosocial agents may not be reliably elicited with the procedure and stimuli adopted. Alternatively, the effect size of infants' preference may be smaller than originally estimated. The study addresses ongoing methodological debates on the replicability of influential findings in infant cognition.