Human infants are aroused and concerned by moral transgressions

Kaßecker, Anja; Verschoor, Stephan A.; Schmidt, Marco F. H.

Human infants are aroused and concerned by moral transgressions

Dateien

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Datum

2023

Publikationstyp

Zeitschriftenartikel

Publikationsstatus

Published

Erschienen in

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2023, 120(31), e2306344120. ISSN 0027-8424. eISSN 1091-6490. Available under: doi: 10.1073/pnas.2306344120

Zusammenfassung

Humans reason and care about ethical issues, such as avoiding unnecessary harm. But what enables us to develop a moral capacity? This question dates back at least to ancient Greece and typically results in the traditional opposition between sentimentalism (the view that morality is mainly driven by socioaffective processes) and rationalism [the view that morality is mainly driven by (socio)cognitive processes or reason]. Here, we used multiple methods (eye-tracking and observations of expressive behaviors) to assess the role of both cognitive and socioaffective processes in infants’ developing morality. We capitalized on the distinction between moral (e.g., harmful) and conventional (e.g., harmless) transgressions to investigate whether 18-mo-old infants understand actions as distinctively moral as opposed to merely disobedient or unexpected. All infants watched the same social scene, but based on prior verbal interactions, an actor’s tearing apart of a picture (an act not intrinsically harmful) with a tool constituted either a conventional (wrong tool), a moral (producing harm), or no violation (correct tool). Infants’ anticipatory looks differentiated between conventional and no violation conditions, suggesting that they processed the verbal interactions and built corresponding expectations. Importantly, infants showed a larger increase in pupil size (physiological arousal), and more expressions indicating empathic concern, in response to a moral than to a conventional violation. Thus, infants differentiated between harmful and harmless transgressions based solely on prior verbal interactions. Together, these convergent findings suggest that human infants’ moral development is fostered by both sociocognitive (inferring harm) and socioaffective processes (empathic concern for others’ welfare).

Fachgebiet (DDC)

150 Psychologie

Schlagwörter

infants, human morality, moral development, oral–conventional distinction, sympathy

Zitieren

ISO 690

KASSECKER, Anja, Stephan A. VERSCHOOR, Marco F. H. SCHMIDT, 2023. Human infants are aroused and concerned by moral transgressions. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2023, 120(31), e2306344120. ISSN 0027-8424. eISSN 1091-6490. Available under: doi: 10.1073/pnas.2306344120

BibTex

@article{Kaecker2023-07-24Human-67626,
  year={2023},
  doi={10.1073/pnas.2306344120},
  title={Human infants are aroused and concerned by moral transgressions},
  number={31},
  volume={120},
  issn={0027-8424},
  journal={Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences},
  author={Kaßecker, Anja and Verschoor, Stephan A. and Schmidt, Marco F. H.},
  note={Article Number: e2306344120}
}

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Begutachtet

Ja