Baby-schema-related cues shape moral expectations about decision-makers: evidence from names, faces, and AI avatars

People routinely form expectations about how others will behave in morally difficult situations, and such expectations guide consequential decisions, including whom to trust, hire, or delegate responsibility to. The present research examined whether baby-schema-related cues systematically bias these moral predictions. Across three experiments with Chinese university students (total N = 858), we tested three manifestations of baby-schema-related cues that share the function of evoking infant-like associations: repeated two-syllable names (Experiment 1), babyfaced appearance (Experiment 2), and visually cute artificial intelligence (AI) avatar designs (Experiment 3). Participants consistently perceived decision-makers displaying baby-schema-related cues as less likely to make utilitarian choices involving direct harm to others. The results show that superficially irrelevant social cues can bias moral expectations about others, although the underlying psychological mechanism remains to be clarified. These findings are relevant to moral psychology, person perception, and the design and evaluation of AI systems.