# Infants make moral character inferences in multi-agent social interactions

## TL;DR

Infants as young as 12 months can infer moral character from social interactions and adjust their expectations based on past behavior.

## Contribution

This study shows infants can make moral character inferences in complex multi-agent scenarios using visual attention.

## Key findings

- Infants expected protectors and victims to distribute resources fairly.
- Infants with siblings or daycare experience showed stronger moral role differentiation.
- Infants had no significant expectations for bystanders or mixed expectations for aggressors.

## Abstract

The ability to infer character from behavior is an essential skill that adults use to navigate the social world. We investigated 12- to 24-month-old infants’ (Experiment 1, n = 160; Experiment 2, n = 96) ability to infer an agent’s moral character from a complex social situation using a behavioral generalization paradigm that capitalized on infants’ visual attention. Infants observed a social event involving an aggressor, victim, and protector or bystander (Experiment 1; Experiment 2 replicated the aggressor and protector conditions). Then, infants saw one of these agents distribute resources fairly (i.e., equally) versus unfairly (i.e., unequally) between two recipients. We found that infants selectively expected protectors and victims to distribute resources fairly and had no significant expectations for bystanders. Infants either expected aggressors to be unfair (Experiment 1) or displayed no significant expectations for aggressors (Experiment 2). Exploratory analyses revealed that infants’ moral character inferences were tied to infants’ social contact: infants with siblings and daycare experience showed greater moral role differentiation (Experiment 2). These results suggest that infants can make broad character inferences in complex multi-agent social situations, and that their ability to differentiate moral roles strengthens with social experience.

Using eye-gaze methods, this research investigated infants’ ability to make moral character inferences. For a wide range of moral roles, infants could use an agent’s past moral behavior to revise their expectations for future moral behavior.