IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0140570.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Probing the Strength of Infants' Preference for Helpers over Hinderers: Two Replication Attempts of Hamlin and Wynn (2011)

Author

Listed:
  • Eliala Salvadori
  • Tatiana Blazsekova
  • Agnes Volein
  • Zsuzsanna Karap
  • Denis Tatone
  • Olivier Mascaro
  • Gergely Csibra

Abstract

Several studies indicate that infants prefer individuals who act prosocially over those who act antisocially toward unrelated third parties. In the present study, we focused on a paradigm published by Kiley Hamlin and Karen Wynn in 2011. In this study, infants were habituated to a live puppet show in which a protagonist tried to open a box to retrieve a toy placed inside. The protagonist was either helped by a second puppet (the “Helper”), or hindered by a third puppet (the “Hinderer”). At test, infants were presented with the Helper and the Hinderer, and encouraged to reach for one of them. In the original study, 75% of 9-month-olds selected the Helper, arguably demonstrating a preference for prosocial over antisocial individuals. We conducted two studies with the aim of replicating this result. Each attempt was performed by a different group of experimenters. Study 1 followed the methods of the published study as faithfully as possible. Study 2 introduced slight modifications to the stimuli and the procedure following the guidelines generously provided by Kiley Hamlin and her collaborators. Yet, in our replication attempts, 9-month-olds’ preference for helpers over hinderers did not differ significantly from chance (62.5% and 50%, respectively, in Studies 1 and 2). Two types of factors could explain why our results differed from those of Hamlin and Wynn: minor methodological dissimilarities (in procedure, materials, or the population tested), or the effect size being smaller than originally assumed. We conclude that fine methodological details that are crucial to infants’ success in this task need to be identified to ensure the replicability of the original result.

Suggested Citation

  • Eliala Salvadori & Tatiana Blazsekova & Agnes Volein & Zsuzsanna Karap & Denis Tatone & Olivier Mascaro & Gergely Csibra, 2015. "Probing the Strength of Infants' Preference for Helpers over Hinderers: Two Replication Attempts of Hamlin and Wynn (2011)," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(11), pages 1-10, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0140570
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0140570
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0140570
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0140570&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0140570?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. J. Kiley Hamlin & Karen Wynn & Paul Bloom, 2007. "Social evaluation by preverbal infants," Nature, Nature, vol. 450(7169), pages 557-559, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mitsuhiko Ishikawa & Yun-hee Park & Michiteru Kitazaki & Shoji Itakura, 2017. "Social information affects adults’ evaluation of fairness in distributions: An ERP approach," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(2), pages 1-13, February.
    2. Zhao, Liang, 2008. "Rethinking basically Economic Assumption on Individual Behavior from Empirical Viewpoints of Evolution and Behavior," MPRA Paper 11152, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Jessica Bregant & Alex Shaw & Katherine D. Kinzler, 2016. "Intuitive Jurisprudence: Early Reasoning About the Functions of Punishment," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(4), pages 693-717, December.
    4. Toshinori Kaneshige & Etsuko Haryu, 2017. "Infants predict expressers’ cooperative behavior through facial expressions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(10), pages 1-15, October.
    5. Gabriele Chierchia & Fabio Tufano & Giorgio Coricelli, 2017. "Friends or Strangers? Strategic Uncertainty and Cooperation across Experimental Games of Strategic Complements and Substitutes," Discussion Papers 2017-03, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    6. Arian Petoft & Mahmoud Abbasi, 2022. "Children’s Criminal Perception; Lessons from Neurolaw," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 15(5), pages 1905-1920, October.
    7. Pablo Medina & Eric Goles & Roberto Zarama & Sergio Rica, 2017. "Self-Organized Societies: On the Sakoda Model of Social Interactions," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2017, pages 1-16, January.
    8. Yasuhiro Kanakogi & Michiko Miyazaki & Hideyuki Takahashi & Hiroki Yamamoto & Tessei Kobayashi & Kazuo Hiraki, 2022. "Third-party punishment by preverbal infants," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(9), pages 1234-1242, September.
    9. Geoffrey Hodgson, 2014. "The evolution of morality and the end of economic man," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 83-106, January.
    10. Yin Wang & Antonia F de C Hamilton, 2013. "Understanding the Role of the ‘Self’ in the Social Priming of Mimicry," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(4), pages 1-11, April.
    11. Fazekas, Károly, 2016. "Tisztesség, empátia, közgazdaságtan [Honour, empathy and economics]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(10), pages 1120-1141.
    12. Claire Holvoet & Thomas Arciszewski & Céline Scola & Delphine Picard, 2018. "Infants’ Visual Preferences for Prosocial Behavior and Other-Race Characters at 6 Months: An Eye-Tracking Study," SAGE Open, , vol. 8(2), pages 21582440187, June.
    13. Molnar-Szakacs, Istvan, 2011. "From actions to empathy and morality - A neural perspective," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 76-85, January.
    14. Kyong-sun Jin & Fransisca Ting & Zijing He & Renée Baillargeon, 2024. "Infants expect some degree of positive and negative reciprocity between strangers," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-13, December.
    15. Liang, Zhao, 2009. "Reexamination of Individual Knowledge and Common Behavior Rules: A Cross-disciplinary View Based on Empirical Evidences," MPRA Paper 20050, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. John Hartwick, 2010. "Encephalization and division of labor by early humans," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 77-100, July.
    17. 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.
    18. Mark D. Ramirez, 2021. "Understanding public blame attributions when private contractors are responsible for civilian casualties," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 54(1), pages 21-40, March.
    19. J Kiley Hamlin & Andrew S Baron, 2014. "Agency Attribution in Infancy: Evidence for a Negativity Bias," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(5), pages 1-8, May.
    20. Moritz Hetzer & Didier Sornette, 2013. "The Co-Evolution of Fairness Preferences and Costly Punishment," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-18, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0140570. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.