Infants’ Social Evaluation of Helpers and Hinderers: A Large‐Scale, Multi‐Lab, Coordinated Replication Study

Evaluating whether someone's behavior is praiseworthy or blameworthy is a fundamental human trait. A seminal study by Hamlin and colleagues in 2007 suggested that the ability to form social evaluations based on third-party interactions emerges within the first year of life: infants preferred a character who helped, over hindered, another who tried but failed to climb a hill. This sparked a new line of inquiry into the origins of social evaluations; however, replication attempts have yielded mixed results. We present a preregistered, multi-laboratory, standardized study aimed at replicating infants' preference for Helpers over Hinderers. We intended to (1) provide a precise estimate of the effect size of infants' preference for Helpers over Hinderers, and (2) determine the degree to which preferences are based on social information. Using the ManyBabies framework for big team-based science, we tested 1018 infants (567 included, 5.5-10.5 months) from 37 labs across five continents. Overall, 49.34% of infants preferred Helpers over Hinderers in the social condition, and 55.85% preferred characters who pushed up, versus down, an inanimate object in the nonsocial condition; neither proportion differed from chance or from each other. This study provides evidence against infants' prosocial preferences in the hill paradigm, suggesting the effect size is weaker, absent, and/or develops later than previously estimated. As the first of its kind, this study serves as a proof-of-concept for using active behavioral measures (e.g., manual choice) in large-scale, multi-lab projects studying infants.

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Publication Details

Journal
Developmental Science
Published
2024-11-26
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13581
Citations
27
Primary Topic
Child and Animal Learning Development
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
19.76

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article

Infants’ Social Evaluation of Helpers and Hinderers: A Large‐Scale, Multi‐Lab, Coordinated Replication Study

Munna R. Shainy, Karola Schlegelmilch, Cheuk Kuen Eric Tsang, Heidi A. Baumgartner et al.
27 citations
Developmental Science
Child and Animal Learning Development
19.76
article

Infants’ Social Evaluation of Helpers and Hinderers: A Large‐Scale, Multi‐Lab, Coordinated Replication Study

Munna R. Shainy, Karola Schlegelmilch, Cheuk Kuen Eric Tsang, Heidi A. Baumgartner, Emma Axelsson, Michelle Giraud, Zhen Zeng, Katrin Rothmaler, Yiyi Wang, Valentina Silvestri, Madison Williams, Laura Franchin, Samuel H. Forbes, Linda Oña, Krista Byers‐Heinlein, Yenny Otálora, Hitomi Chijiiwa, Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann, Laura Schlingloff, Ronit Roth‐Hanania, Francis Yuen, Tobias Schuwerk, Arkadiusz Urbanek, A. M. Woodward, Liquan Liu, Mark A. Schmuckler, Naomi Havron, Sabine Seehagen, Alessandra Geraci, Arthur Capelier‐Mourguy, Jonathan F. Kominsky, Hilal H. Şen, Tiffany Doan, Hyun-Joo Song, Hannes Rakoczy, Marina Proft, Michał Misiak, Kristina Wolsey, Julie Bertels, Mira L. Nencheva, Yasuhiro Kanakogi, Annie E. Wertz, Piotr Sorokowski, Natalie Christner, Miriam T. Loeffler, Kelsey Lucca, Laura K. Cirelli, Anna Exner, Alyssa A. Quinn, Lindsey J. Powell, Jessica A. Sommerville, Zoe Liberman, Terry Tin‐Yau Wong, Yanjie Su, Florina Uzefovsky, Lucie Zimmer, Charisse B. Pickron, Tobias Großmann, Mélanie Söderström, Wiktoria Jędryczka, Julien Mayor, J. Kiley Hamlin, Hernando Taborda‐Osorio, Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Bailey Immel, Casey Lew‐Williams, David Moreau, Egbert Matzner, John Corbit, Denis Tatone, Peter J. Reschke, Alia Martin, Annette M. E. Henderson, Ingmar Visser, Megan E. Gornik, Markus Paulus, Xianwei Meng, Moritz M. Daum, Nicolás Alessandroni, Bill Pepe, Olivia Allison, Yilin Liu, Wenxi Fei, Michael C. Frank, Teresa Taylor‐Partridge, Isabelle Hadley, Mario Álvarez, Yang Wu, Mitali Bhavsar, Chantelle S.‐S. Chin, Michaela Dresel, Grzegorz Jankiewicz, Sandro E. Stutz, Janina Baumer
article en
27 citations

Abstract

Evaluating whether someone's behavior is praiseworthy or blameworthy is a fundamental human trait. A seminal study by Hamlin and colleagues in 2007 suggested that the ability to form social evaluations based on third-party interactions emerges within the first year of life: infants preferred a character who helped, over hindered, another who tried but failed to climb a hill. This sparked a new line of inquiry into the origins of social evaluations; however, replication attempts have yielded mixed results. We present a preregistered, multi-laboratory, standardized study aimed at replicating infants' preference for Helpers over Hinderers. We intended to (1) provide a precise estimate of the effect size of infants' preference for Helpers over Hinderers, and (2) determine the degree to which preferences are based on social information. Using the ManyBabies framework for big team-based science, we tested 1018 infants (567 included, 5.5-10.5 months) from 37 labs across five continents. Overall, 49.34% of infants preferred Helpers over Hinderers in the social condition, and 55.85% preferred characters who pushed up, versus down, an inanimate object in the nonsocial condition; neither proportion differed from chance or from each other. This study provides evidence against infants' prosocial preferences in the hill paradigm, suggesting the effect size is weaker, absent, and/or develops later than previously estimated. As the first of its kind, this study serves as a proof-of-concept for using active behavioral measures (e.g., manual choice) in large-scale, multi-lab projects studying infants.

Developmental ScienceVol. 28(1)
Brigham Young University (US), University of Technology Sydney (AU), Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (IL), University of Minnesota (US), Université Libre de Bruxelles (BE), University of British Columbia (CA), Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HK), University of Auckland (NZ), University of California, Santa Barbara (US), The University of Texas at Dallas (US), Chinese University of Hong Kong (HK), University of Oslo (NO), University of Toronto (CA), Durham University (GB), University of Trento (IT), Yonsei University (KR), St. Francis Xavier University (CA), Central European University (AT), Princeton University (US), Peking University (CN), University of Zurich (CH), University of Wrocław (PL), Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (CO), Scarborough Health Network (CA), University of California San Diego (US), Osaka University of Human Sciences (JP), University of Catania (IT), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (DE), University of Oxford (GB), University of Chicago (US), Victoria University of Wellington (NZ), Twin Cities Orthopedics (US), Max Planck Institute for Human Development (DE), Institute of Psychology (PL), Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (DE), Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yafo (IL), University of Manitoba (CA), University of Virginia (US), University of the Incarnate Word (US), Arizona State University (US), Nagoya University (JP), Concordia University (CA), University of Akureyri (IS), Technical University of Munich (DE), Western Sydney University (AU), University of Milano-Bicocca (IT), Lancaster University (GB), University of Göttingen (DE), University of Newcastle Australia (AU), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE), University of Amsterdam (NL), University of Hong Kong (HK), Ruhr University Bochum (DE), University of Haifa (IL), Universidad del Valle (CO), Leipzig University (DE), Stanford University (US)
National Science Foundation, Pennington Biomedical Research Foundation, Arizona State University, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Israel Science Foundation, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Universidad del Valle, Háskólinn á Akureyri, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Reduced inequalities
Openalex Percentile: Top 0%
Child and Animal Learning Development
19.76
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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