“I pick you”: the impact of fairness and race on infants’ selection of social partners

Abstract

By 15 months of age infants are sensitive to violations of fairness norms as assessed via their enhanced visual attention to unfair versus fair outcomes in violation-of-expectation paradigms. The current study investigated whether 15-month-old infants select social partners on the basis of prior fair versus unfair behavior, and whether infants integrate social selections on the basis of fairness with the race of the distributors and recipients involved in the exchange. Experiment 1 demonstrated that after witnessing one adult distribute toys to two recipients fairly (2:2 distribution), and another adult distribute toys to two recipients unfairly (1:3 distribution), Caucasian infants selected fair over unfair distributors when both distributors were Caucasian; however, this preference was not present when the fair actor was Asian and the unfair actor was Caucasian. In Experiment 2, when fairness, the race of the distributor, and the race of the recipients were fully crossed, Caucasian infants’ social selections varied as a function of the race of the recipient advantaged by the unfair distributor. Specifically, infants were more likely to select the fair distributor when the unfair recipient advantaged the Asian (versus the Caucasian) recipient. These findings provide evidence that infants select social partners on the basis of prior fair behavior and that infants also take into account the race of distributors and recipients when making their social selections.

Beyond Good and Evil

“…Children as young as 19 months also prefer to reward an individual who helped over an individual who hindered a third party (Dahl, Schuck, & Campos, 2013;Hamlin et al, 2011). 2 A recent study found that even 15-month-old infants preferred to give a resource to an individual who had allocated resources fairly in the past over one who allocated unfairly, under some circumstances (Burns & Sommerville, 2014). Yet children have only shown this type of selective prosociality when the task forces them to make a choice between two recipients.…”

Infants’ Visual Preferences for Prosocial Behavior and Other-Race Characters at 6 Months: An Eye-Tracking Study

“…For instance, in a recent study by Burns and Sommerville (2014), 15-monthold Caucasian infants were exposed to real-life actors acting fairly or unfairly with regard to how they distributed food to a third partner. In one condition, both distributors were Caucasian (prosocial preference test controlling for race), and infants displayed a preference for the fair distributor.…”

“…A spontaneous tendency to prefer prosocial behavior has been observed in infants aged between 3 and 36 months, when they are exposed to a variety of competing social scenarios: helping versus hindering agents (e.g., involved in climbing a hill or opening a box); comforting versus threatening agents; fairly acting versus unfairly acting agents; or game-playing versus game-breaking agents (Holvoet et al, 2016a). In these studies, infants' preferences for prosocial agents were demonstrated through their reaching behavior (Buon et al, 2014;Burns & Sommerville, 2014;Geraci & Surian, 2011;Hamlin & Wynn, 2011;Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007;Scola, Holvoet, Arciszewski, & Picard, 2015) or their looking behavior (Hamlin & Wynn, 2011;Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2010). Other studies, however, adopted infant's choice by reaching and geometric figures (or toys) as agents and failed to highlight a preference for prosocial agents (Cowell & Decety, 2015;Salvadori et al, 2015), thereby questioning the robustness of infants' preference for prosocial agents.…”

“…Indeed, adults' social judgments and preferences are affected by facial appearance (Olson & Marshuetz, 2005), and we can easily assume the same phenomenon could be observed in infants. The only two studies that have explored the influence of appearance have gone through the influence of race (Burns & Sommerville, 2014;Scola et al, 2015). The authors made the hypothesis that the preference for prosocial agents may vary according to the appearance of the agents, namely, whether their race is 784993S GOXXX10.1177/2158244018784993SAGE OpenHolvoet et al…”

Infants’ and Young Children’s Preferences for Prosocial over Antisocial Others

“…Suggestive that these simple selective responses during infancy are consistent with more complex acts later on, toddlers selectively give resources to helpers but take them from hinderers [Hamlin, Wynn, Bloom, & Mahajan, 2011], selectively help givers over takers [Dahl, Schuck & Campos, 2013], and when interacting with a single individual, more readily give preferred objects to helpers than they do to hinderers [Van de Vondervoort, Aknin, Kushnir, Slevinsky, & Hamlin, 2018]. Finally, these preferential acts go beyond the domain of helping and hindering: toddlers selectively approach and accept toys from fair versus unfair distributors [Burns & Sommerville, 2014;Geraci & Surian, 2011;Lucca, Pospisil, & Sommerville, 2018].…”