Woo Brandon M, Liu Shari, Gweon Hyowon, Spelke Elizabeth S
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
The Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Open Mind (Camb). 2024 Apr 10;8:483-499. doi: 10.1162/opmi_a_00129. eCollection 2024.
Capacities to understand and evaluate others' actions are fundamental to human social life. Infants and toddlers are sensitive to the costs of others' actions, infer others' values from the costs of the actions they take, and prefer those who help others to those who hinder them, but it is largely unknown whether and how cost considerations inform early understanding of third-party prosocial actions. In three experiments ( = 94), we asked whether 16-month-old toddlers value agents who selectively help those who need it most. Presented with two agents who attempted two tasks, toddlers preferentially looked to and touched someone who helped the agent in greater need, both when one agent's task required more effort and when the tasks were the same but one agent was weaker. These results provide evidence that toddlers engage in need-based evaluations of helping, applying their understanding of action utilities to their social evaluations.
理解和评估他人行为的能力是人类社会生活的基础。婴幼儿对他人行为的代价很敏感，会从他人采取的行为代价中推断其价值观，并且比起阻碍他人的人，更喜欢帮助他人的人，但在很大程度上，尚不清楚代价考量是否以及如何影响对第三方亲社会行为的早期理解。在三项实验（N = 94）中，我们探究了16个月大的幼儿是否重视那些有选择地帮助最需要帮助之人的施助者。向幼儿展示两个尝试两项任务的施助者，当一个施助者的任务需要付出更多努力时，以及当任务相同但其中一个施助者较弱时，幼儿都会优先看向并触摸那个帮助了更有需要的施助者的人。这些结果证明，幼儿会基于需求对帮助行为进行评估，将他们对行为效用的理解应用于社会评价中。
