Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60622, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2012 May;112(1):102-10. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2011.11.003. Epub 2012 Jan 28.
Three experiments investigated whether a negativity bias in social perception extends to preschool-aged children's memory for the details of others' social actions and experiences. After learning about individuals who committed nice or mean social actions, children in Experiment 1 were more accurate at remembering who was mean compared with who was nice. In Experiment 2, children showed a memory advantage for the specific details of actions committed by mean individuals compared with nice individuals. In Experiment 3, children exhibited better memory for the details of mean actions compared with nice actions when the vignettes were presented from the perspective of the recipients instead of the perpetrators of these actions. Taken together, these findings suggest that children show heightened memory for the details of negative social actions over positive social actions. Such a memory bias may be advantageous in helping children to predict potentially threatening situations in the future.
三项实验研究了在社会认知中是否存在负面偏见，这种偏见是否会延伸到学龄前儿童对他人社会行为和经历细节的记忆中。在了解了做出友善或不友善社会行为的个体之后，实验 1 中的儿童在记住谁不友善时比记住谁友善时更准确。在实验 2 中，与友善的个体相比，儿童对不友善个体所做行为的具体细节表现出记忆优势。在实验 3 中，当从行为接受者的角度而不是行为实施者的角度呈现小插曲时，儿童对不友善行为的细节表现出更好的记忆，而对友善行为的细节则表现出较差的记忆。这些发现表明，儿童对负面社会行为的细节比正面社会行为的细节表现出更高的记忆能力。这种记忆偏差可能有助于儿童预测未来潜在的威胁情况。
