The Influence of Maternal Socialization on Infants’ Social Evaluation in Two Cultures

Abstract

Although a growing body of research has explored the early development of social evaluation, no research has directly compared social evaluations of infants between different cultures. In addition, there has been little understanding regarding socialization's effects on this ability. The goal of this study was to expand on earlier findings on social evaluation in infants by investigating a broader sample from two cultures, and to explore the influence of maternal socialization on infants’ social evaluation. Using the violation of expectations and the preferential reaching paradigm, four groups aged 6‐, 9‐, 12‐, and 15–18 months and their mothers from Japan and the United States (159 dyads) were compared in terms of spontaneous social evaluations. Japanese and European American infants showed similar performance in dishabituation to the inconsistent behavior and in their reaching preference for prosocial over antisocial agents, indicating that the emergence of spontaneous social evaluation is not culture‐specific. Furthermore, our study provides a novel finding regarding the relationship between mothers’ socially evaluative speech and infants’ preference for prosocial over antisocial agents. These results suggest that the development of sociomoral understanding results from complicated interactions among evolutionary, cognitive, and social factors.

Toddlers' preference for prosocial versus antisocial agents: No associations with empathy or attachment security

“…Cowell and Decety (2015) took into account interindividual differences by assessing toddlers' temperament and parents' disposition in perspective taking, but found neither of those factors to be related to toddlers' preference in the hill paradigm. Shimizu et al (2018) found that the number of mothers' socially evaluative comments, while watching the box and ball paradigms with their infants was associated with a higher likelihood of choosing the prosocial puppet in their children. Infants' sociomoral preference had been assessed before mothers watched the box and ball paradigms with their infants, to ensure that infants' choices were not influenced by having listened to their mothers' comments on the box and ball paradigm.…”

“…Shimizu et al. (2018) found that the number of mothers' socially evaluative comments, while watching the box and ball paradigms with their infants was associated with a higher likelihood of choosing the prosocial puppet in their children. Infants' sociomoral preference had been assessed before mothers watched the box and ball paradigms with their infants, to ensure that infants' choices were not influenced by having listened to their mothers' comments on the box and ball paradigm.…”

“…Indeed, a meta-analysis by Margoni and Surian (2018) concluded that infants show a preference for a prosocial over an antisocial character across different social scenarios, with 64% (CI [60% to 69%]; adjusted effect size to account for publication bias) choosing the prosocial character across studies, thus indicating that infants' preference for prosocial others is not limited to specific scenarios. On top of the original hill paradigm, as used by Hamlin et al (2007) in their first study (see description above), these different social scenarios, in which infants' prosocial preference was found, included three additional paradigms, all of which focus on showing infants helping, sharing, and cooperating scenarios (Holvoet et al, 2016): (1) a ball paradigm, in which a protagonist plays with a ball, which then rolls away or which is deliberately thrown towards the helper or hinderer, and which is either given or thrown back by a giver or taken away by a hinderer (e.g., Holvoet et al, 2018;Shimizu et al, 2018); (2) a box paradigm, in which a protagonist tries to open a box with a toy inside and is either helped by a helper or hindered by a hinderer (e.g., Hamlin, 2014;Steckler et al, 2017); (3) an allocating goods paradigm, in which a fair and an unfair distributor distribute goods such as crackers to two characters (e.g., Burns & Sommerville, 2014).…”

Early Learning Environments for the Development of Attention: Maternal Narratives in the United States and Japan

“…Families in the United States were recruited in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Japanese families were recruited in Saitama, Japan. Infants and mothers came to the laboratory as part of an ongoing investigation focused on early social and cognitive development, which was reported elsewhere (Shimizu et al, 2018). All the U.S. infants and mothers were born in the United States and spoke English as their first language.…”

Do 15-month-old infants prefer helpers? A replication of Hamlin et al . (2007)

“…A similar lack of preference was documented by Nighbor et al [23] with 5-to 16-month-olds. Conversely, using the 'ball scenario', Scola et al [24] reported a significant preference for prosocial characters in 12-to 24-and 24-to 36-month-olds, whereas Shimizu et al [25] documented a similar, albeit weaker, preference in 15-to 18-month-olds, but not in younger age groups. It is worth noting, however, that previous replication attempts have followed the methods of the original studies to varying degrees of fidelity.…”