Babies can make sense of complex social situations, taking into account who knows what about whom, according to a new research. “Our findings show that 13 month olds can make sense of social situations using their understanding about others’ minds and social evaluation skills,” said psychological scientists and study authors You-jung Choi and Yuyan luo of the University of Missouri.
The researchers were interested in how information, or lack thereof, can affect social interactions with others. They brought 48 infants, around one-year-old, for an experiment. The infant sat on his or her parent’s lap, facing a little stage where hand puppets would appear.
Two puppets (A and B) appeared on stage and clapped their hands or hopped around together, allowing the infants to familiarise themselves with the characters and learn that A and B were friendly with each other.
Then, the infants were presented with a particular social scenario. In one, the infants saw a third puppet, C, approach and get deliberately knocked down by B, as A looked on from the side.
In another scenario, B knocked down C, but A wasn’t present. And in a third scenario, C was accidentally knocked down as A looked on. Choi and luo wanted to know how the infants would respond to subsequent interactions between A and B, given what they had seen. Researchers found that infants responded to outcomes in the three scenarios differently, in accordance with the social implications of each scenario.
So, if A was a witness to the deliberate hit, the infants seemed to expect A to shun B. They spent more time looking at the puppets when A was “friendly” with B after the hit (wiggling and swaying together) than when A ignored B, suggesting that the friendly interaction was an unexpected turn of events.
“This to us indicates infants have strong feelings about how people should deal with a character who hits others: even his or her acquaintance or ‘friend’ should do something about it,” researchers said.