一岁多的婴儿懂公平

一岁多的婴儿懂公平

一项发表在PLoS ONE期刊上的文章称，15个月大的婴儿就能发现人们是否被公平对待，并具有基本的利他观念，可以牺牲自己的利益去帮助他人。先前的研究显示，两岁的婴儿会帮助他人，六七岁的儿童有公平的概念；但是美国华盛顿大学的Jessica Sommerville发现，这些特性在婴儿年龄更小时就已经存在。

研究人员对47个婴儿进行了测试。在第一组实验中，婴儿会看到两段视频，第一段视频中的两个人被分配给不均等的食物，第二段视频中则平均分配。婴儿通常会对令他们感到惊奇的事物更加关注，研究人员发现总体上婴儿们更加关注食物不平均分配的情况。在第二组实验中，研究人员给每个婴儿两件玩具，之后向他们索要一件玩具，结果三分之二的婴儿愿意分享玩具。其中，一部分婴儿愿意和别人分享自己更喜欢的那件玩具，这些“无私分享者”中有92%在第一个实验中更关注食物不平等分配的视频；另一部分婴儿和别人分享的是自己不喜欢的玩具，这类“自私分享者”中有86%在第一个实验中更关注食物平均分配的视频。可见，无私分享者对不公平分配食物的视频更敏感，而自私分享者则相反。此外，婴儿在观察到不公平现象后更愿意与他人分享自己喜爱的玩具，因此公平和利他观念之间存在某种联系。Sommerville说：“人的公平和利他观念的产生时间比我们认为得早很多。婴儿们希望食物被公平地分配，如果一个人获得的饼干和牛奶多于另一人，他们会感到惊讶。”







Children as young as 15 months might be capable of altruism and of sensing whether an outcome is fair, according to a study published Friday in the journal PLoS ONE. 

The study demonstrates that buds of cooperative behavior may be observed in infancy and suggests we can create environments for children that reinforce a compassionate adulthood.

Forty-seven infants participated in the two-phase study conducted by University of Washington developmental psychologist Jessica Sommerville and co-author Marco Schmidt, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. 

The first phase presented a “violation of expectation” scenario intended to test whether 15-month-old children could recognize unexpected behavior that, in this case, was unfair. A brief film showed a bowl of crackers distributed equally between two recipients, and a clip immediately followed where one recipient got a larger amount. Infants then saw the same demonstration with a pitcher of milk instead of crackers. Researchers measured the length of time the children looked at each clip.

The second phase allowed children to choose between a LEGO block or LEGO doll to ascertain their preference, but the children had access to both. Then an experimenter asked infants to hand back a toy of their choice.

The study found 86 percent of “selfish starters,” those who offered their less-preferred toy in the second phase, looked longer at fair outcomes in the first phase. 

But 92 percent of “altruistic” children who presented their preferred toy, looked longer at the unfair food distribution. Experimenters inferred that altruistic children would be more surprised by unequal food distribution and maintain longer eye contact as they recognized an unfair situation.

Sommerville said these gestures might stem from a natural propensity toward fairness as well as learning through observation. 

“I would imagine it’s some sort of confluence of the two,” she said. “The interesting thing is, even though those two tasks are about different things, we’re still seeing a nice linkage there. Fairness and altruism — at some level they’re cut from the same cloth.”

She said previous studies of altruism in children identify such qualities, but the subjects are usually two years old or older.

“It’s happening earlier than we thought,” she said. “So, it’s important that people are being more cognizant of things they do and the interaction they expose kids to.”

Amanda Woodward, William S. Gray professor of psychology at University of Chicago, specializes in infant cognition. She said she thinks Sommerville’s assessment — that infants’ own moral behavior is related to how they evaluate issues of fairness — is reasonable.

“The methods here are really novel, and I think they’re going to influence how people do their research going forward,” she said. “There’s been a resurgence of interest in figuring out ‘What are the mechanisms that give us morality?’" Woodward was not involved in the study.

The experimenters are planning a longitudinal study to observe infants at 18 to 20 months old, and she said future research is needed to determine the effects of infants’ altruistic tendencies.

“One of the limitations is that we don’t know if infants are making a negative evaluation or judgment of the people involved,” Sommerville said. “Will they not want to play with them or affiliate with them?”

Amy Wechsler of Roscoe Village in the North Side is a clinical social worker with PlayWorks Therapy, which provides developmental therapy services to children in the Chicagoland area. She believes the study’s violation-of-expectation test involving the video was well-constructed but that the sharing task possibly leaves room for a number of extraneous factors. 

“They may not be sharing not because they don’t want a toy,” she said. “It might be because they don’t understand. I think they got a little lucky in finding a correlation between the two tasks.” She was not involved in the study.

The study notes multiple reasons that infants might not respond to tasks, such as distraction, a lack of understanding or stranger anxiety.

“It’s governed by different principles at different times,” Wechsler said. “Human development is so variable and so different, it’s impossible to really know if these kids are, number 1, on an equal playing field and, number 2, the field you think they’re on.”

Woodward said it is rare in infancy research for a study to combine two bases for observation. She said the analysis of both altruism and fairness is fitting because there is one class of psychological theories focusing on the human response of empathy and one on how humans logically deduce moral conclusions.

“If you think about it, as adults, those two things sometimes go together, but they’re not completely synonymous,” she said. “This study tells us that you can identify both.”