Social Evaluation in Babies

About the project

A seminal study suggested that the ability to form social evaluations as good or bad based on third-party interactions emerges within the first year of life (Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007). However, replication attempts demonstrated mixed results either because infants’ preference for prosocial over anti-social agent is overestimated in the original study or methodological and contextual differences from the original study. In this study, we aim (1) to replicate the original study as part of a the ManyBabies4 (MB4) project, a large-scale, multi-laboratory, standardized investigation of infants’ social evaluations, and (2) to examine individual differences in infants’ early social evaluations across diverse cultural contexts. We take a multi-method approach, combining experimental, observational, and survey-based measures in a large sample of infants from labs across the world.

Members

  • Hilal H. Şen, Assistant Professor, University of Akureyri
  • Stefanía Guðrún Eyjólfsdóttir, MA student, University of Akureyri
  • Hafdís Kristný Haraldsdóttir, BA student, University of Akureyri

Collaborators

  • Kelsey Lucca, Assistant Professor, Arizona State University
  • Yiyi Wang, Post Doc, University of Chicago
  • Kiley Hamlin, Professor, University of British Columbia

Press/Media