Costly rejection of wrongdoers by infants and children

Abstract

How unappealing are individuals who behave badly towards others? We show here that children and even infants, although motivated by material rewards, are nonetheless willing to incur costs to avoid "doing business" with a wrongdoer. When given the choice to accept a smaller offering from a do-gooder or a larger offering from a wrongdoer, children and infants chose to accept the smaller offering. It was only when the difference between the offerings was very large that their aversion to the wrongdoer was overcome by personal incentives. These findings show that a willingness to forgo self-interests when faced with wrongdoers is a fundamental aspect of human nature.

Evolution of cooperation under indirect reciprocity and arbitrary exploration rates

“…Indeed, under SJ , whoever cooperates with an opponent carrying a Bad reputation gets himself a Bad reputation. Interestingly, this judgement is somehow verified in the behaviour of toddlers, who prefer those that mistreat (rather than help) opponents that misbehaved in the past55565758.…”

An earlier role for intent in children’s partner choice versus punishment

“…In particular, judgments of wrongness develop sensitivity to intentions before judgments of punishment (Cushman et al, 2013). Second, recent work with infants demonstrates that they can take agents' mental states into account when making sociomoral evaluations (Dahl et al, 2013;Hamlin, 2013;Lucca et al, 2018;Tasimi & Wynn, 2016;Woo et al, 2017). Although the nature of the mental states that infants take into account is under debate (Van de Vondervoort & Hamlin, 2016;Woodward, 2009), these results suggest that at least some degree of information about others' mental states can exert an influence on early forms of moral judgment (e.g.…”

“…By 13 months of age, children use information about distributions a third party makes to others to inform their social evaluations: after observing a third party distribute resources either equally or unequally, infants prefer to interact with (e.g., accept a toy from) someone who distributes fairly (Lucca, Pospisil, & Sommerville, 2018). And, infants give up resources to interact with someone who helps others rather than harms others (Tasimi & Wynn, 2016). At 2 years of age, children prefer to help those who have helped others over those who have harmed others (Dahl, Schuck, & Campos, 2013).…”

Children's Initial Responses and Beyond: Effects of Niceness and Similarity on Preference, Giving, and Memory

“…Although this study focused on who children like, it is worth noting that a number of studies have also investigated who children dislike. Following prior work showing that children reject wrongdoers (Buon et al, 2014;Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2010;Hamlin et al, 2007;Scola et al, 2015;Tasimi, Johnson, & Wynn, 2017;Tasimi & Wynn, 2016) and dissimilar individuals (Mahajan & Wynn, 2012;Wynn, 2016), it is unclear whether children in our study liked the nice/similar character, disliked the mean/dissimilar character, or both. For example, previous studies report a memory advantage for wrongdoers (Kinzler & Shutts, 2008) and wrongdoings (Baltazar, Shutts, & Kinzler, 2012).…”