Young infants expect an unfamiliar adult to comfort a crying baby: Evidence from a standard violation-of-expectation task and a novel infant-triggered-video task

Toddlers and infants expect individuals to refrain from helping an ingroup victim’s aggressor

“…The presence of selective expectations about indirect TPP in toddlers and infants gives weight to the notion that these expectations reflect an abstract principle of ingroup support, which is part of the "first draft" (8) of human moral cognition (4-10, 57, 59, 60). As noted in the Introduction, from a very young age, children's concern for ingroup support carries a rich set of expectations related to caring for ingroup members and showing them loyalty (57)(58)(59)(60)(61)(62)(63)69). Our research extends these findings by demonstrating that just as children expect individuals to refrain from harming ingroup members, they also expect individuals to punish, at least indirectly, harm to ingroup members, whether perpetrated by ingroup or outgroup wrongdoers.…”

“…Finally, our results make clear that these changes in children's expectations occur only with transgressions against ingroup victims. When the victim was not specifically identified as a member of the bystander's group, toddlers' and infants' expectations were those typically found for interactions between ingroup individuals (57)(58)(59)(60)(61)(62)(63) or between noningroup individuals (46, 53-55, 57-63, 69, 70). Thus, in the case of an ingroup wrongdoer, the bystander was expected to provide help and to refrain from hindering; in the case of a noningroup wrongdoer, however, helping and hindering were both viewed as acceptable courses of action.…”

“…The second set of findings suggested that an abstract expectation of ingroup support is present early in life (4-10, 57). Thus, 3-y-olds who heard stories about two minimal groups (marked by labels and outfits) predicted that a harmful action (e.g., stealing a block) would be more likely to be directed at an outgroup as opposed to an ingroup victim (58); 19-to 28-mo-olds expected a distributor from one group of animal puppets (e.g., monkeys) to reserve scarce resources for ingroup recipients (other monkeys) as opposed to outgroup recipients (e.g., giraffes) (59); 17-moolds expected an individual to provide help to another individual in need of instrumental assistance when the two belonged to the same minimal group (marked by labels), but they held no expectations about the provision of help when the two individuals belonged to different minimal groups or when their group memberships were unspecified (60); after watching nonhuman adult characters soothe baby characters, 16-mo-olds found it unexpected if one baby preferred a baby who had been soothed by a different adult (and hence presumably belonged to a different group) over a baby who had been soothed by the same adult (and hence presumably belonged to the same group) (61); after watching two groups of nonhuman characters perform distinct novel conventional actions, 7-to 12-mo-olds detected a violation if a member of one group chose to imitate the other group's conventional action (62); and 4-to 12-mo-olds expected a woman alone with a crying baby (who presumably belonged to the same group as the woman) to attempt to comfort the baby, and they found it unexpected when she ignored the baby instead (63). Together, these results suggested that an abstract expectation of ingroup support is present early in life and that mere categorization of individuals into the same minimal group is sufficient to trigger rich expectations of ingroup care and loyalty (6,57,58,60).…”

Do Infants in the First Year of Life Expect Equal Resource Allocations?

“…The distribution of these 15 infants, in terms of the condition they were assigned to (and the test event they saw), was: Experiment 1, 4 experimental (1 unequal, 3 equal) and 3 inanimate-control (1 unequal, 2 equal); Experiment 2, 3 experimental (equal) and 3 cover-control (1 unequal, 2 equal); and Experiment 3, 1 experimental (equal) and 1 control (unequal). Ceiling infants are typically eliminated on the assumption that they needed additional familiarization to process the events they were shown (for other reports with eliminated ceiling babies, see e.g., Scott et al, 2015; Baillargeon and DeJong, 2017; Jin et al, 2018; Margoni et al, 2018). In line with this assumption, the ceiling infants in Experiments 1–3 looked significantly longer during the familiarization trial ( n = 15, M = 33.77, SD = 20.62) than did the infants included in the experiments ( n = 120, M = 18.24, SD = 12.59), F (1,133) = 17.24, p < 0.0001.…”

Infants expect leaders to right wrongs

“…This suggested that infants would perceive the wrongdoer and the victim, 2 group members of equal standing, to be entitled to an equal share of the toys, and hence that they would detect a fairness transgression when the wrongdoer took both toys, leaving none for the victim. Finally, there is also evidence that infants aged 12 to 17 mo possess an abstract expectation of ingroup support: For example, individuals in a group are expected to care for each other by refraining from unprovoked harm and by providing assistance when needed (47)(48)(49)(50). This suggested that infants would also perceive an ingroup-support transgression in our events and would be particularly sensitive to the plight of the victim, who was treated unfairly by a member of her own group.…”