It is a human universal to classify some people as friends and others as enemies, and to judge their actions as right or wrong. Indeed, sociologists, economists, and evolutionary biologists have argued that social evaluation is a prerequisite for human interaction among non-relatives. Altruism can only evolve if individuals have some capacity to categorize, and remember, other individuals as helpful or as antagonistic. At the same time, however, there is considerable cross-cultural variation in what counts as a kind or a cruel act, and hence societies differ in how people come to classify and judge other people around them.
The studies proposed here explore the emergence of social evaluation in infants and young children, examining which aspects are present from the earliest months of life, and which require cultural support and social learning. This project will examine, specifically, both how infants and young children come to understand social evaluation processes in others, and how they form their own positive and negative attitudes towards individuals.
Our studies are based on previous findings from the PI and colleagues showing that pre-verbal infants form expectations about how individuals will respond to each other based on their previous interactions. For example, by 9 months of age, infants expect an individual to later approach another who was previously helpful, and to avoid another who was previously antagonistic. The experiments in Series 1 use a looking-time method to explore the nature of this understanding. Do babies really believe that an individual likes one who helped it and dislikes one who harmed it? Experiments in Series 2 use a variety of methods to explore the conditions under which infants and toddlers themselves make positive and negative social evaluations. Do infants themselves like a helper and dislike a harmer?
These studies address central debates within developmental psychology, but they also bear on broader questions about the role of innate knowledge and cultural learning in the genesis of human social interaction. Increasing our scientific understanding of the developmental origins of social evaluation will aid us in better understanding such important social phenomena as prejudice, stereotypes, and moral judgment and reasoning.
