Social Evaluation in Infants

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

Social evaluation is a human universal. Even young babies prefer some people over others; they are drawn to familiar individuals over strangers, attractive individuals over unattractive ones, and those who are similar to them (such as speakers of the same language) over those who are dissimilar. Recent experimental studies have found that infants are also sensitive to an individual's social actions; they prefer to interact with someone who has helped another, and avoid one who has harmed another. Recent research has also shown that infants and toddlers discriminate among different individuals for purposes of learning -- they will selectively learn from individuals seen as 'competent' or 'knowledgeable' and will refrain from learning from those seen as giving unreliable information. But no research to date has examined whether infants' social preferences influence their learning. This project investigates the role that infant's social preferences play in how they learn from other people. These studies focus on learning in several ecologically relevant and theoretically important areas (e.g., determining what foods to eat, learning the meanings of words, etc.). In these studies, infants and toddlers will be given the opportunity to learn from prosocial individuals (who have been seen to be helpful to a third party), as well as from antisocial individuals (seen to have acted harmfully toward a third party). The questions of interest focus on whether, and when, infants' social evaluations of the characters influence their decisions regarding from whom to learn. In particular, these studies ask, across distinct domains of knowledge, whether young humans learn differentially from prosocial and from antisocial individuals: Do young learners model themselves more strongly after "good" than "bad" characters? And if so, do they simply fail to learn from the latter (i.e., neither adopting nor avoiding their choices), or do they actively model themselves opposite to "bad" individuals (i.e., actively avoid the choices made by antisocial individuals). More generally, these studies investigate the conditions that elicit differential learning from prosocial and antisocial individuals, as well as the conditions (if any) under which learning is unaffected by the social character of the modeler. Social evaluation and early learning are topics of fundamental theoretical importance across domains such as social psychology, cultural anthropology, behavioral economics, evolutionary theory, and, in particular, child development. In addition, this work has the potential of benefiting society as a whole, by providing scientists, educators, and parents with a better understanding of the interaction of social knowledge and early learning, including language learning. An understanding of learning in normally-developing children is necessary for an adequate account of what happens in cases of abnormal development, as occurs in children with autism and Specific Language Impairment, and may help inform therapy and treatment.