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Infants Distinguish Antisocial Actions Directed towards Fair and Unfair Agents

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  • Marek Meristo
  • Luca Surian

Abstract

Three experiments provide evidence of an incipient sense of fairness in preverbal infants. Ten-month-old infants were shown cartoon videos with two agents, the ‘donors’, who distributed resources to two identical recipients. One donor always distributed the goods equally, while the other performed unequal distributions by giving everything to one recipient. In the test phase, a third agent hit or took resources away from either the fair or the unfair donor. We found that infants looked longer when the antisocial actions were directed towards the unfair rather than the fair donor. These findings support the view that infants are able to evaluate agents based on their distributive actions and suggest that the foundations of human socio-moral competence are acquired independently of parental feedback and linguistic experience.

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  • Marek Meristo & Luca Surian, 2014. "Infants Distinguish Antisocial Actions Directed towards Fair and Unfair Agents," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(10), pages 1-7, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0110553
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0110553
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Elena Nava & Emanuela Croci & Chiara Turati, 2019. "‘I see you sharing, thus I share with you’: indirect reciprocity in toddlers but not infants," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-9, December.

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