Social evaluation is what we do all the time; we evaluate people around us by looking at their behaviors, and physical attributes. We decide who is friend and who is foe by social evaluation. It is clear that adults rapidly do this, but how about infants? Do they also differentiate people who help, and people who harm? The authors of the article, Hamlin, et al. hypothesized that preverbal infants do social evaluation. The hypothesis is then confirmed with the results suggesting, "preverbal infants assess individuals on the basis of their behavior towards others" (Hamlin et al. 2007). They prefer a helpful individual to a hinderer, prefer a helper to a neutral individual, and prefer a neutral individual to a hinderer. They assessed 6 and 10-month-old infants by measuring their looking times and their preference of choice. They conducted 3 experiments and in these experiments they used a helping stimulus, a hindering stimulus and a neutral stimulus. In experiment 1, when infants were encouraged to choose between the helper and the hinderer, they prefer to choose the helper. When 10-month-olds, but not 6-month-olds, watched the climber approaching the hinderer which is novel to infants, they looked longer at the screen, compared to when the climber approaching the helper which is unsurprising. In experiment 2, "infants overwhelmingly chose the helper when this action was embedded in a social context". In experiment 3, it is clear that the infants prefer the helper and avoid the hinderer when they were both paired with a neutral stimulus. In general, young infants have a preference for those who cooperate with others to help them achieve their goals, and a dislike for those who impede others goals.
These findings are very interesting because it made me think about various subjects related to this study. For example, culture may have an effect on these results. There may be some differences regarding of this topic between individualistic and collectivistic cultures.
