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

Abstract

The nature of moral judgments is continuously debated by developmental psychologists. For instance, are moral judgments reason-based and/or emotion-based, and to what extent are moral judgments experience-dependent versus experience-independent? This paper discusses how methodological concerns impact the investigation of moral judgments and provides an emotion-based intuitive definition of morality that encourages the empirical exploration of whether moral evaluations emerge in the absence of relevant experience and before complex reasoning abilities arise. Evidence is reviewed suggesting that preverbal infants evaluate third parties based on their morally relevant acts, positively evaluating prosocial others and negatively evaluating antisocial others. Several unanswered questions are considered, including to what extent infants’ evaluations are rooted in emotion and whether they distinguish social versus moral concerns.

Development of Environmental Moral Judgment with Specific Teaching on Sustainable Development

“…Children exhibit also innate predispositions, such as pro-social behaviors emerging as early as six months of age (Hamlin & Van De Vondervoort , 2018). They demonstrate sensitivity to the socio-moral dimensions of interactions, allowing them to distinguish between positive and negative actions.…”

Moral Reasoning Enables Developmental and Societal Change

“…Over the past two decades, a wave of research has examined the precursors of morality in infancy and toddlerhood (Dahl, 2019; Hamlin & Van de Vondervoort, 2018; Wynn & Bloom, 2014). In several seminal studies, Hamlin and colleagues explored whether infants preferred helpful over hindering characters (Hamlin et al, 2011).…”