Jara-Ettinger Julian, Tenenbaum Joshua B, Schulz Laura E
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Psychol Sci. 2015 May;26(5):633-40. doi: 10.1177/0956797615572806. Epub 2015 Apr 13.
Adults' social evaluations are influenced by their perception of other people's competence and motivation: Helping when it is difficult to help is praiseworthy, and not helping when it is easy to help is reprehensible. Here, we look at whether children's social evaluations are affected by the costs that agents incur. We found that toddlers can use the time and effort associated with goal-directed actions to distinguish agents, and that children prefer agents who incur fewer costs in completing a goal. When two agents refuse to help, children retain a preference for the more competent agent but infer that the less competent agent is nicer. These results suggest that children value agents who incur fewer costs, but understand that failure to engage in a low-cost action implies a lack of motivation. We propose that a naive utility calculus underlies inferences from the costs and rewards of goal-directed action and thereby supports social cognition.
在难以提供帮助时伸出援手值得赞扬，而在容易提供帮助时却不帮忙则应受谴责。在此，我们探究儿童的社会评价是否会受到行动者所付出代价的影响。我们发现，幼儿能够利用与目标导向行动相关的时间和精力来区分行动者，并且儿童更喜欢在完成目标时付出代价较少的行动者。当两个行动者都拒绝提供帮助时，儿童仍然偏爱能力更强的行动者，但会推断能力较弱的行动者更友善。这些结果表明，儿童重视付出代价较少的行动者，但明白不采取低成本行动意味着缺乏动机。我们提出，一种朴素的效用计算构成了从目标导向行动的成本和收益进行推断的基础，从而支持社会认知。
