Infants expect friends, but not rivals, to be happy for each other when they succeed

Smith-Flores, Alexis S.; Herrera-Guevara, Isabel A; Powell, Lindsey J.

doi:10.1111/desc.13423

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 76 publications

(111 reference statements)

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“…In a series of experiments, differences in 10- to 11-month-old infants’ looking time indicated that they were surprised if a friendly observer responded to an actor’s success with sadness, relative to a happy response. In contrast, when events depicted a rival observer watching the actor succeed, infants’ looking provided no evidence for an expectation of either a happy or a sad vicarious response (Smith-Flores et al, 2023 ). Thus, like the children in the current study, infants use social relationship information to inform their expectations about vicarious emotions after positive outcomes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One set of looking time experiments tested 10- to 11-month-old infants’ expectations about vicarious emotions across different relationship contexts (Smith-Flores et al, 2023 ). Infants were introduced to a pair of characters with either a positive or a negative relationship, followed by trials in which one character attempted a goal-directed action and the other character responded happily or sadly to the outcome.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This may reflect limited early reasoning about vicarious emotions, focused on predicting empathic responses. Alternatively, infants may struggle more generally with predicting negative emotions in such contexts; they also fail to expect that a friendly observer or even the actor will respond sadly to a failed attempt (Skerry & Spelke, 2014 ; Smith-Flores et al, 2023 ). By age 4, children are able to make robust, appraisal-based predictions about both positive and negative emotions (Fabes et al, 1991 ; Wellman et al, 2000 ), and appear to possess an emerging norm of empathic concern (Paulus et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Children’s Reasoning About Empathy and Social Relationships

Smith-Flores,

Bonamy,

Powell

2023

Open Mind

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Across the lifespan, empathic and counter-empathic emotions are shaped by social relationships. Here we test the hypothesis that this connection is encoded in children’s intuitive theory of psychology, allowing them to predict when others will feel empathy versus counter-empathy and to use vicarious emotion information to infer relationships. We asked 4- to 7-year-old children (N = 79) to make emotion predictions or relationship inferences in response to stories featuring two characters, an experiencer and an observer, and either a positive or negative outcome for the experiencer. In the context of positive outcomes, we found that children engaged in robust joint reasoning about relationships and vicarious emotions. When given information about the characters’ relationship, children predicted empathy from a friendly observer and counter-empathy from a rival observer. When given information about the observer’s response to the experiencer, children inferred positive and negative relationships from empathic and counter-empathic responses, respectively. In the context of negative outcomes, children predicted that both friendly and rival observers would feel empathy toward the experiencer, but they still used information about empathic versus counter-empathic responses to infer relationship status. Our results suggest that young children in the US have a blanket expectation of empathic concern in response to negative outcomes, but otherwise expect and infer that vicarious emotions are connected to social relationships. Future research should investigate if children use this understanding to select social partners, evaluate their own relationships, or decide when to express empathy toward others.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Children’s Reasoning About Empathy and Social Relationships

Smith-Flores,

Bonamy,

Powell

2023

Open Mind

Self Cite

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“…For example, 3–9-year-olds think that it is more permissible to harm outgroup compared to ingroup members (e.g., Rhodes & Chalik, 2013), and 4-year-olds use patterns of helping and harming to determine likely group membership (Switzer et al, 2020). Seeds of these expectations arise by infancy: 10–11-month-olds expect an agent to express happiness when their “friend” reaches their goal, but not when an unaffiliated character does the same (Smith-Flores et al, 2023). Most related to the current research, 4–7-year-olds predict that people will feel more empathy for their friends than for their enemies (Smith-Flores et al, in press) and 9–14-month-olds like actors who harm a disliked character (Hamlin et al, 2013), which could indicate early development of outgroup Schadenfreude.…”

Section: Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expectations of intergroup empathy bias emerge by early childhood.

Tompkins,

Vasquez,

Gerdin

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Across two preregistered studies with children (3-12-year-olds; N = 356) and adults (N = 262) from the United States, we find robust expectations for intergroup empathic biases. Participants predicted that people would feel better about ingroup fortunes than outgroup fortunes and worse about ingroup misfortunes than outgroup misfortunes. Expectations of empathic bias were stronger when there was animosity and weaker when there was fondness between groups. The largest developmental differences emerged in participants' expectations about how others feel about outgroup misfortunes, particularly when there was intergroup animosity. Whereas young children (3-5-year-olds) generally expected people to feel empathy for the outgroup (regardless of the relationship between the groups), older children (9-12-year-olds) and adults expected Schadenfreude (feeling good when an outgroup experiences a misfortune) when the groups disliked one another. Overall, expectations of empathic biases emerge early but may be weaker when there are positive intergroup relationships. Public Significance StatementThis set of studies demonstrates that expectations of empathy are biased even early in development. From preschool through adulthood, participants expected people to feel more empathy for ingroup members than outgroup members. Therefore, expectations that people will feel more empathy for their own group may be part of a suite of early emerging intergroup biases and expectations. Interestingly, the largest developmental differences were seen for expectations of outgroup Schadenfreude: Expectations that people would feel good about an outgroup member's misfortune only emerged in older children (9-12-year-olds) and adults, and only when there was acrimony between the groups, suggesting empathic biases may be driven more by early expectations of positive feelings for the ingroup rather than negative feelings for the outgroup.

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“…One set of looking time experiments tested 10-to 11-month-old infants' expectations about vicarious emotions across different relationship contexts (Smith-Flores, Herrera-Guevara, & Powell, 2023). Infants were introduced to a pair of characters with either a positive or a negative relationship, followed by trials in which one character attempted a goal-directed action and the other character responded happily or sadly to the outcome.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s reasoning about empathy and social relationships

Smith-Flores,

Bonamy,

Powell

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Across the lifespan empathic and counter-empathic emotions are shaped by social relationships. Here we test the hypothesis that this connection is encoded in children’s intuitive theory of psychology, allowing them to predict when others will feel empathy versus counter-empathy and to use vicarious emotion information to infer relationships. We asked 4- to 7-year-old children (N = 77) to make emotion predictions or relationship inferences in response to stories featuring two characters, an experiencer and an observer, and either a positive or negative outcome for the experiencer. In the context of positive outcomes, we found that children engaged in robust joint reasoning about relationships and vicarious emotions. When given information about the characters’ relationship, children predicted empathy from a friendly observer and counter-empathy from a rival observer. When given information about the observer’s response to the experiencer, children inferred positive and negative relationships from empathic and counter-empathic responses, respectively. In the context of negative outcomes, children predicted that both friendly and rival observers would feel empathy toward the experiencer, but they still used information about empathic versus counter-empathic responses to infer relationship status. Our results suggest that young children in the US have a blanket expectation of empathic concern in response to negative outcomes, but otherwise expect and infer that vicarious emotions are connected to social relationships. Future research should investigate if children use this understanding to select social partners, evaluate their own relationships, or decide when to express empathy toward others.

show abstract

Infants expect friends, but not rivals, to be happy for each other when they succeed

Cited by 10 publications

References 76 publications

Children’s Reasoning About Empathy and Social Relationships

Children’s Reasoning About Empathy and Social Relationships

Expectations of intergroup empathy bias emerge by early childhood.

Children’s reasoning about empathy and social relationships

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