Infant Differential Behavioral Responding to Discrete Emotions

Emotional communication regulates the behaviors of social partners. Research on individuals’ respondingto others’ emotions typically compares responses to a single negative emotion compared withresponses to a neutral or positive emotion. Furthermore, coding of such responses routinely measuresurface level features of the behavior (e.g., approach vs. avoidance) rather than its underlying function(e.g., the goal of the approach or avoidant behavior). This investigation examined infants’ responding toothers’ emotional displays across 5 discrete emotions: joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. Specifically,16-, 19-, and 24-month-old infants observed an adult communicate a discrete emotion toward a stimulusduring a naturalistic interaction. Infants’ responses were coded to capture the function of their behaviors(e.g., exploration, prosocial behavior, and security seeking). The results revealed a number of instancesindicating that infants use different functional behaviors in response to discrete emotions. Differences inbehaviors across emotions were clearest in the 24-month-old infants, though younger infants alsodemonstrated some differential use of behaviors in response to discrete emotions. This is the firstcomprehensive study to identify differences in how infants respond with goal-directed behaviors todiscrete emotions. Additionally, the inclusion of a function-based coding scheme and interpersonalparadigms may be informative for future emotion research with children and adults. Possible developmentalaccounts for the observed behaviors and the benefits of coding techniques emphasizing thefunction of social behavior over their form are discussed

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

Evaluating others’ actions as praiseworthy or blameworthy is a fundamental aspect of human nature. A seminal study published in 2007 suggested that the ability to form social evaluations based on third-party interactions emerges within the first year of life, considerably earlier than previously thought (Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007). In this study, infants demonstrated a preference for a character (i.e., a shape with eyes) who helped, over one who hindered, another character who tried but failed to climb a hill. This study sparked a new line of inquiry into infants’ social evaluations; however, numerous attempts to replicate the original findings yielded mixed results, with some reporting effects not reliably different from chance. These failed replications point to at least two possibilities: (1) the original study may have overestimated the true effect size of infants’ preference for helpers, or (2) key methodological or contextual differences from the original study may have compromised the replication attempts. Here we present a pre-registered, closely coordinated, multi-laboratory, standardized study aimed at replicating the helping/hindering finding using a well-controlled video version of the hill show. We intended to (1) provide a precise estimate of the true effect size of infants’ preference for helpers over hinderers, and (2) determine the degree to which infants’ preferences are based on social features of the Helper/Hinderer scenarios. XYZ labs participated in the study yielding a total sample size of XYZ infants between the ages of 5.5 and 10.5 months. Brief summary of results will be added after data collection