Bilingual Infants are More Sensitive to Morally Relevant Social Behavior than Monolingual Infants

ABSTRACT

Forming social evaluations of others is a core component of social cognition. In this study, the relationship between bilingual experience and social evaluations was investigated in 8-month-old infants. We compared monolingual and bilingual infants’ responses to third-party interactions where characters performed prosocial and antisocial actions toward a neutral actor. The same prosocial and antisocial characters were then rewarded by positive acts or punished by negative acts performed by “givers” and “takers,” respectively. Results demonstrated that bilingual infants preferred prosocial agents whereas monolingual infants did not prefer prosocial or antisocial agents. Moreover, bilingual infants demonstrated selective preferences for actors who rewarded prosocial actors as well as for those who punished antisocial actors. In contrast, monolingual infants preferred actors who rewarded prosocial characters, but demonstrated no preference for actors who punished antisocial characters. Results point to heightened social sensitivity on the part of bilingual infants in evaluating morally relevant social events. Findings are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms that may link bilingual exposure and social evaluations in infancy.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to an HSS grant and Ministry of Education Tier 2 Academic Research Fund (MOE2017-T2-1-084) grant awarded to LS. We acknowledge Felicia Poh for recruitment and testing of participants, Jessica S.H. Tan for assistance with this study and J. Kiley Hamlin for methodological guidance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ We used two recipients (neutral characters) to limit transfer of preference between the prosocial and antisocial events. For example, if infants witnessed a prosocial event directed at one character, we reasoned that they may make inferences about that character as being deserving of goodwill. We then thought that subsequent antisocial actions directed to this character may be shaped by prior impressions formed during the prosocial phase. We therefore used two different characters, that were the same type of animal, so that each action sequence began with a neutral portrayal of the recipient.

² All of our participants were of Asian origin. In the original Hamlin paradigm as well, it has been more difficult to elicit reaching behavior from Asian participants tested in Canada and North America (J.K. Hamlin, personal communication, December 12, 2018), raising the possibility that infants’ reaching responses in this paradigm may be culturally mediated.