Infants’ social evaluation abilities: testing their preference for prosocial agents at 6, 12 and 18 months with different social scenarios

ABSTRACT

Recent research suggests that infants prefer prosocial behaviour. However, some studies have failed to report this preference, raising the question of which specific parameters allow it to be observed. We attempted to answer this question by investigating whether the preference varies (1) with age (by testing infants aged 6, 12 and 18 months), (2) with type of social behaviour (help, play or share) and (3) when the pro- and antisocial agents’ appearance is manipulated (neutral, own-race or other-race faces). To this end, we use an eye-tracking methodology to assess infants’ preferences for pro- versus antisocial agents featured in animated cartoons. We found that the prosocial preference was not stable across ages and varied according to social scenario. No sound conclusion could be reached about the influence of faces. Our results raise a new question, concerning the extent to which very young infants perceive prosociality in complex social behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• Infancy
• visual preference
• prosocial behaviour
• face
• eyetracking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Claire Holvoet is a PhD student in developmental psychology at Aix Marseille University, France. She is interested in early social cognition and conducts experimental research studies at Psycle Research Centre BabyLab. She uses the eyetracking technology to assess young infants' preferences for prosocial behaviors.

Céline Scola is associate professor of developmental psychology at Aix Marseille University in Centre PsyCLÉ Lab.(EA 3273) Her research interests concern infant's social development including social cognition during infancy, infant's motor activity, mother-child relationships and mother emotional state.

Thomas Arciszewski has a Phd in social psychology with primary interest in social cognition. He started to work on early social cognition by collaborating with developemental psychologists. This new field broadens and enriches his first research focus.

Delphine Picard is full professor of psychology at Aix Marseille University. Her research interests concern the developmental aspects of human behavior, including haptic perception, drawing activity, food behavior and social cognition.

ORCID

Claire Holvoet http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4844-7456

Notes

1 The experiments were conducted in our BabyLab at the Maison de la Recherche, Aix Marseille University, France.

2 Infants’ visual preferences in the test phase were recorded, but we chose to focus on visual preferences displayed during the scenario.