Perception of prosocial behavior in infants: What is a nice agent for infants？

Abstract

Experimental studies on the origins of socio-moral evaluations have focused on moral reasoning such as harm, help, and fairness in distributive behavior. In this paper we discussed of development of socio-moral evaluations according to several previous studies, then introduced our original studies concern to fairness in infants and sympathy in preverbal infants. We conclude that 1) infants have knowledge of prosocial behavior in some sense, 2) infants prefer helper to hinderer, 3) infants link helping dispositions to a propensity for fairness in distributing actions, and 4) infants show rudimentary sympathetic behavior to the weak.