Dahl Audun
Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA.
Dev Sci. 2016 Nov;19(6):1049-1057. doi: 10.1111/desc.12342. Epub 2015 Aug 25.
Infants harm others at higher rates than older children and adults. A common explanation is that infants fail to regulate their frustration, becoming aggressive when they do not get what they want. The present research investigated whether infants also use force against others without provocation, for instance because they seek to explore the consequences of hitting or try to pet someone using too much force. Two studies with infants aged 11 to 24 months investigated infants' use of force against others in everyday life using maternal report (Study 1) and direct observation (Study 2). In both studies, a large proportion of infants' acts of force were unprovoked and occurred without signs of infant distress. Unlike provoked acts, unprovoked acts showed a decrease late in the second year and were positively associated with reports of infant pleasure-proneness. The presence of unprovoked acts of harm may reflect that infants' actions are not reliably guided by an aversion for harming others and may provide unique opportunities for early moral development.
婴儿伤害他人的比率高于大龄儿童和成年人。一个常见的解释是，婴儿无法调节自己的挫败感，在没有得到想要的东西时就会变得具有攻击性。本研究调查了婴儿是否也会在没有挑衅的情况下对他人使用武力，例如因为他们试图探索击打他人的后果，或者试图用过大的力气抚摸他人。两项针对11至24个月大婴儿的研究，分别使用母亲报告（研究1）和直接观察（研究2），调查了婴儿在日常生活中对他人使用武力的情况。在两项研究中，很大一部分婴儿的武力行为都是无端的，而且发生时没有婴儿痛苦的迹象。与有挑衅的行为不同，无端行为在第二年后期有所减少，并且与婴儿快乐倾向的报告呈正相关。无端伤害行为的存在可能反映出婴儿的行为并没有可靠地受到对伤害他人的厌恶情绪的引导，并且可能为早期道德发展提供独特的机会。
