Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants
Human cooperation is a key driving force behind the evolutionary success of our hominin lineage. At the proximate level, biologists and social scientists have identified other-regarding preferences – such as fairness based on egalitarian motives, and altruism – as likely candidates for fostering lar...
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science
2011
|
| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3188955/ |
| id |
pubmed-3188955 |
|---|---|
| recordtype |
oai_dc |
| spelling |
pubmed-31889552011-10-14 Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants Schmidt, Marco F. H. Sommerville, Jessica A. Research Article Human cooperation is a key driving force behind the evolutionary success of our hominin lineage. At the proximate level, biologists and social scientists have identified other-regarding preferences – such as fairness based on egalitarian motives, and altruism – as likely candidates for fostering large-scale cooperation. A critical question concerns the ontogenetic origins of these constituents of cooperative behavior, as well as whether they emerge independently or in an interrelated fashion. The answer to this question will shed light on the interdisciplinary debate regarding the significance of such preferences for explaining how humans become such cooperative beings. We investigated 15-month-old infants' sensitivity to fairness, and their altruistic behavior, assessed via infants' reactions to a third-party resource distribution task, and via a sharing task. Our results challenge current models of the development of fairness and altruism in two ways. First, in contrast to past work suggesting that fairness and altruism may not emerge until early to mid-childhood, 15-month-old infants are sensitive to fairness and can engage in altruistic sharing. Second, infants' degree of sensitivity to fairness as a third-party observer was related to whether they shared toys altruistically or selfishly, indicating that moral evaluations and prosocial behavior are heavily interconnected from early in development. Our results present the first evidence that the roots of a basic sense of fairness and altruism can be found in infancy, and that these other-regarding preferences develop in a parallel and interwoven fashion. These findings support arguments for an evolutionary basis – most likely in dialectical manner including both biological and cultural mechanisms – of human egalitarianism given the rapidly developing nature of other-regarding preferences and their role in the evolution of human-specific forms of cooperation. Future work of this kind will help determine to what extent uniquely human sociality and morality depend on other-regarding preferences emerging early in life. Public Library of Science 2011-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC3188955/ /pubmed/22003380 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0023223 Text en Schmidt, Sommerville. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Schmidt, Marco F. H. Sommerville, Jessica A. |
| spellingShingle |
Schmidt, Marco F. H. Sommerville, Jessica A. Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants |
| author_facet |
Schmidt, Marco F. H. Sommerville, Jessica A. |
| author_sort |
Schmidt, Marco F. H. |
| title |
Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants |
| title_short |
Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants |
| title_full |
Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants |
| title_fullStr |
Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants |
| title_sort |
fairness expectations and altruistic sharing in 15-month-old human infants |
| description |
Human cooperation is a key driving force behind the evolutionary success of our hominin lineage. At the proximate level, biologists and social scientists have identified other-regarding preferences – such as fairness based on egalitarian motives, and altruism – as likely candidates for fostering large-scale cooperation. A critical question concerns the ontogenetic origins of these constituents of cooperative behavior, as well as whether they emerge independently or in an interrelated fashion. The answer to this question will shed light on the interdisciplinary debate regarding the significance of such preferences for explaining how humans become such cooperative beings. We investigated 15-month-old infants' sensitivity to fairness, and their altruistic behavior, assessed via infants' reactions to a third-party resource distribution task, and via a sharing task. Our results challenge current models of the development of fairness and altruism in two ways. First, in contrast to past work suggesting that fairness and altruism may not emerge until early to mid-childhood, 15-month-old infants are sensitive to fairness and can engage in altruistic sharing. Second, infants' degree of sensitivity to fairness as a third-party observer was related to whether they shared toys altruistically or selfishly, indicating that moral evaluations and prosocial behavior are heavily interconnected from early in development. Our results present the first evidence that the roots of a basic sense of fairness and altruism can be found in infancy, and that these other-regarding preferences develop in a parallel and interwoven fashion. These findings support arguments for an evolutionary basis – most likely in dialectical manner including both biological and cultural mechanisms – of human egalitarianism given the rapidly developing nature of other-regarding preferences and their role in the evolution of human-specific forms of cooperation. Future work of this kind will help determine to what extent uniquely human sociality and morality depend on other-regarding preferences emerging early in life. |
| publisher |
Public Library of Science |
| publishDate |
2011 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3188955/ |
| _version_ |
1611479553642856448 |