Abstract
Previous research showed that infants and toddlers are inclined to help prosocial agents and assign a positive valence to fair distributions. Also, they expect that positive and negative actions directed toward distributors will conform to reciprocity principles. This study investigates whether toddlers are selective in helping others, as a function of others’ previous distributive actions. Toddlers were presented with real-life events in which two actresses distributed resources either equally or unequally between two puppets. Then, they played together with a ball that accidentally fell to the ground and asked participants to help them to retrieve it. Participants preferred to help the actress who performed equal distributions. This finding suggests that by the second year children’s prosocial actions are modulated by their emerging sense of fairness.HighlightsToddlers (mean age = 25 months) are selective in helping distributors.Toddlers prefer helping a fair rather than an unfair distributor.Toddlers’ selective helping provides evidence for an early sense of fairness.
Highlights
Cooperation, the acting together for a common end or purpose (Tuomela, 1993), is an essential aspect of human life, it is necessary to its survival as well as to its flourishing
Due to the small sample size, the p-values of the separate binomial tests were above the 0.05 significance level and reached trend level in the older group (p = 0.142 and p = 0.076, respectively). These results reveal that toddlers’ selective helping is linked to agents’ previous distributive actions
This finding contributes to our understanding of early social cognition in two important ways
Summary
Cooperation, the acting together for a common end or purpose (Tuomela, 1993), is an essential aspect of human life, it is necessary to its survival as well as to its flourishing. It requires good skills in partner choice, allowing the individual to stay away from free-riders, non-reciprocators, and other unfair and harmful individuals (Fehr et al, 2008; Baumard et al, 2013; Shaw et al, 2014). Cooperation requires an understanding of others’ goals and it is grounded in social motivations for helping and sharing with others (Tomasello, 2007). Recent works on infants’ social preferences and expectations help us to address this question and constraint nativist and empiricist models of cognitive architecture and development (Margolis and Laurence, 2013; Tomasello and Vaish, 2013). By 10 months, they expect agents to perform equal distributions (Meristo et al, 2016) and to act positively toward fair donors and negatively toward unfair donors (Meristo and Surian, 2013, 2014)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
