Infants help a non-human agent

Young children can be motivated to help adults by sympathetic concern based upon empathy, but the underlying mechanisms are unknown. One account of empathy-based sympathetic helping in adults states that it arises due to direct-matching mirror-system mechanisms which allow the observer to vicariousl...

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Published in:PloS one 2013-09, Vol.8 (9), p.e75130-e75130
Main Authors: Kenward, Ben, Gredebäck, Gustaf
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adults
Behavior
Child Development - physiology
Children
Cognition & reasoning
Developmental psychology
Emotions
Empathy
Empathy - physiology
Female
Humans
Hypotheses
Infant
Infants
Male
Matching
Motivation - physiology
Neurosciences
Psychology
Science
Sympathy
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description Young children can be motivated to help adults by sympathetic concern based upon empathy, but the underlying mechanisms are unknown. One account of empathy-based sympathetic helping in adults states that it arises due to direct-matching mirror-system mechanisms which allow the observer to vicariously experience the situation of the individual in need of help. This mechanism could not account for helping of a geometric-shape agent lacking human-isomorphic body-parts. Here 17-month-olds observed a ball-shaped non-human agent trying to reach a goal but failing because it was blocked by a barrier. Infants helped the agent by lifting it over the barrier. They performed this action less frequently in a control condition in which the barrier could not be construed as blocking the agent. Direct matching is therefore not required for motivating helping in infants, indicating that at least some of our early helpful tendencies do not depend on human-specific mechanisms. Empathy-based mechanisms that do not require direct-matching provide one plausible basis for the observed helping. A second possibility is that rather than being based on empathy, the observed helping occurred as a result of a goal-contagion process in which the infants were primed with the unfulfilled goal.
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1932-6203
language eng
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source Publicly Available Content Database; PubMed Central
subjects Adults
Behavior
Child Development - physiology
Children
Cognition & reasoning
Developmental psychology
Emotions
Empathy
Empathy - physiology
Female
Humans
Hypotheses
Infant
Infants
Male
Matching
Motivation - physiology
Neurosciences
Psychology
Science
Sympathy
title Infants help a non-human agent
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