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Pang, Samantha; Drew, Raechel; Hamlin, J. Kiley

Humans often characterize other individuals based on shared interests, language, status, and other traits. This can even be seen in infants as young as eleven months old, who prefer puppets that share the same food preference as themselves (Mahajan & Wynn, 2012). Infants also prefer to harm individuals dissimilar to them (Hamlin et al., 2013). Many studies have found that infants present certain moral and prosocial behaviours to individuals depending on their similarities (Botwin et al., 1997; Brewer, 2016; Cikara et al., 2011; Weisel & Böhm, 2015). However, few studies have explored what factors play a role in an infant’s ability to differentiate and categorize similar and dissimilar individuals and further use these categorizations to make moral judgments. This current exploratory study uses a longitudinal approach to examine whether their preference for similar individuals at 12 months old, cognitive processing and deliberation speed at 17 months old can predict their preference in hindering a dissimilar puppet at 17 months old. Chi-square analysis showed that their preference for similar individuals at 12 months old is not significantly associated with harming a dissimilar character at 17 months old, ꭓ2 (1, n = 27) = 1.74, p = .19. A binary logistic regression also showed that age (b = 0.2855, SE = 0.52, p = .58), cognitive processing speed (b = 0.4128, SE = 0.37, p = .27), and latency to choose (b = -0.6843, SE = 0.52, p = .19) also do not significantly predict an infant’s ability to understand the complex task at 17 months old. Though these results are insignificant and there are multiple limitations in this current study, there may still be many factors that can predict how and why infants have selective moral and prosocial behaviour. Understanding infants’ perceptions of social situations can further explain how certain preferences, and possibly even biases, develop throughout our lives.

Text

University of British Columbia. PSYC 349

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0437500

Arts, Faculty of; Psychology, Department of

Faculty; Graduate; Undergraduate

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