Preverbal infants expect members of social groups to act alike

Abstract

The short ontogenetic time courses of conformity and stereotyping, both evident in the preschool years, point to the possibility that a central component of human social cognition is an early developing expectation that social group members will engage in common behaviors. Across a series of experiments, we show that by 7 months of age preverbal infants differentiate between actions by individuals that are and are not consistent with the actions of their social group members. Infants responded to group-inconsistent actions only in a social context: they failed to distinguish the same behavioral differences when presented with collections of nonsocial agents or inanimate objects. These results suggest that infants expect social group membership and behavior to covary, before extensive intergroup experience or linguistic input. This expectation is consistent with the socially motivated imitation and stereotyping evident in toddlers and preschoolers, and may play a role in the early emergence of one or both of these aspects of social behavior and cognition.social development | infancy

Preschoolers’ credulity toward misinformation from ingroup versus outgroup speakers

“…Adults are more inclined to conform to the opinions and behaviors of ingroup others than of outgroup others (e.g., Fu et al, 2007). This bias has neural bases (e.g., Stallen, De Dreu, Shalvi, Smidts, & Sanfey, 2012) and emerges during infancy (e.g., Powell & Spelke, 2013). In line with these findings, the 4-year-olds in Experiment 1 might have conformed to the false testimony of the ingroup speaker but acted as dissenters to the outgroup speaker due to either a belief that the ingroup speaker was more likely to provide accurate information or the greater social pressure they felt to agree with the ingroup speaker rather than the outgroup speaker.…”

Infants possess an abstract expectation of ingroup support

“…For example, when faced with a speaker of their native language and a foreign speaker, infants ages 10-12 mo preferred toys or snacks endorsed by the native speaker (52,53). Similarly, when faced with two groups of nonhuman characters, infants ages 7-12 mo expected members of each group to endorse conventional actions performed by the group (54). Although familiarity and generalization effects could contribute to these findings, they also are consistent with ingroup loyalty interpretations; ongoing experiments are exploring this possibility.…”

Goal attributions and instrumental helping at 14 and 24 months of age

“…Infants may attribute enduring goals and preferences to the protagonist in a helping situation, and attribute second-order goals (i.e., the goal of acting so as to satisfy or thwart the goal of the protagonist) to the characters who help or hinder him. Alternatively, infants may only expect that the parties to a positive social interaction will tend to adopt the same or converging actions (Powell & Spelke, 2013), and infants may prefer characters who manifest this behavior when they are perceptually accessible to one another (Powell & Spelke, 2014). On the latter interpretation, infants might understand acts of helping as manifesting prosocial behavior, but they might fail to view protagonists as having desires that are distinct from those of their helpers, and they might fail to view the instrumental actions of helpers as guided by second-order social goals.…”