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

Vaporova, Elena; Zmyj, Norbert

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0235595

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Before reviewing evidence that infants and toddlers understand and evaluate more complex morally relevant behaviors, it is important to address the issue of replicability. Indeed, to date there have been several failures to replicate infants' preferences for helpers vs. hinderers (e.g., Cowell & Decety 2015;Salvadori et al 2015;Schlingloff et al 2020;Vaporova & Zmyj 2020); these failures have inspired questions about the robustness of early responses to morally relevant events. Given that the possibility that infants possess a moral core requires that these results are robust, we will discuss our view of the (current) state of the evidence that infants prefer prosocial to antisocial others.…”

Section: Moral Corementioning

confidence: 99%

Human Morality Is Based on an Early-Emerging Moral Core

Woo

Tan

Hamlin

2022

Annu. Rev. Dev. Psychol.

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Scholars from across the social sciences, biological sciences, and humanities have long emphasized the role of human morality in supporting cooperation. How does morality arise in human development? One possibility is that morality is acquired through years of socialization and active learning. Alternatively, morality is instead based on a “moral core”: primitive abilities that emerge in infancy to make sense of morally relevant behaviors. Here, we review evidence that infants and toddlers understand a variety of morally relevant behaviors and readily evaluate agents who engage in them. These abilities appear to be rooted in the goals and intentions driving agents’ morally relevant behaviors and are sensitive to group membership. This evidence is consistent with a moral core, which may support later social and moral development and ultimately be leveraged for human cooperation. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, Volume 4 is December 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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Section: Moral Corementioning

confidence: 99%

Human Morality Is Based on an Early-Emerging Moral Core

Woo

Tan

Hamlin

2022

Annu. Rev. Dev. Psychol.

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“…Revencu & Csibra, 2020)? Finally, replication attempts using this measure have yielded mixed results (for studies replicating the effect, see Chae & Song, 2018;Fortin, 2019;Shimizu et al, 2018 with 15-to 18-month-olds; for unsuccessful replications, see Colaizzi, 2016;Cowell & Decety, 2015;Maxwell & Rafetseder, 2015;Nighbor et al, 2017;Salvadori et al, 2015;Schlingloff et al, 2020;Shimizu et al, 2018 with 6-, 9-and 12-month-olds;Vaporova & Zmyj, 2020).…”

Section: Manual Choice and Preference For Helpersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Representation of Third-Party Helping Interactions in Infancy

Schlingloff¹,

Tatone²,

Csibra³

2023

Preprint

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Despite the numerous findings on the sophisticated inferences that human infants draw from observed third-party helping interactions, currently there is no theoretical account of how they come to understand such events in the first place. After reviewing the available evidence in infants, we describe an account of how human adults understand helping actions. According to this mature concept, helping is a second-order goal-directed action aiming to increase the utility of another agent (the helpee) via reducing the cost, or increasing the reward, of the helpee’s own goal-directed action. We then identify the cognitive prerequisites for conceiving helping this way and ask whether these are available to infants in the interpretation of helping interactions. In contrast to the mature concept, we offer two simpler alternatives that may underlie the early understanding of helping actions: (i) helping as enabling, which requires second-order goal attribution but no utility calculus, and (ii) helping as joint action, which requires efficiency (i.e., utility) evaluation without demanding second-order goal attribution. We evaluate the evidence supporting these accounts, derive unique predictions from them, and describe what developmental pathway towards the mature concept they envisage. We conclude the article by outlining further open questions that the developmental literature on the interpretation of helping interactions has not yet addressed.

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“…Revencu & Csibra 2020)? Finally, replication attempts using this measure have yielded mixed results (for studies replicating the effect, see Chae & Song 2018, Fortin 2019, Shimizu et al 2018, but only in 15-to 18-month-olds; for unsuccessful replications, see Colaizzi 2016, Cowell & Decety 2015, Maxwell & Rafetseder 2015, Nighbor et al 2017, Salvadori et al 2015, Schlingloff et al 2020, Vaporova & Zmyj 2020.…”

Section: Manual Choice and Preference For Helpersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Representation of Third-Party Helping Interactions in Infancy

Schlingloff-Nemecz

Tatone

Csibra

2023

Annu. Rev. Dev. Psychol.

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Despite numerous findings on the sophisticated inferences that human infants draw from observing third-party helping interactions, currently there is no theoretical account of how infants come to understand such events in the first place. After reviewing the available evidence in infants, we describe an account of how human adults understand helping actions. According to this mature concept, helping is a second-order, goal-directed action aiming to increase the utility of another agent (the Helpee) via reducing the cost, or increasing the reward, of the Helpee's own goal-directed action. We then identify the cognitive prerequisites for conceiving helping in this way and ask whether these are available to infants in the interpretation of helping interactions. In contrast to the mature concept, we offer two simpler alternatives that may underlie the early understanding of helping actions: ( a) helping as enabling, which requires second-order goal attribution but no utility calculus, and ( b) helping as joint action, which requires efficiency (i.e., utility) evaluation without demanding second-order goal attribution. We evaluate the evidence supporting these accounts, derive unique predictions from them, and describe what developmental pathway toward the mature concept they envisage. We conclude the article by outlining further open questions that the developmental literature on the interpretation of helping interactions has not yet addressed. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, Volume 5 is December 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

show abstract

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

Cited by 4 publications

References 59 publications

Human Morality Is Based on an Early-Emerging Moral Core

Human Morality Is Based on an Early-Emerging Moral Core

The Representation of Third-Party Helping Interactions in Infancy

The Representation of Third-Party Helping Interactions in Infancy

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