Adults will often make snap judgements about someone—especially when it comes to negative traits. If we see someone argue with another driver over a parking space, for instance, we may assume that person tends to be confrontational.
Now, two new studies with hundreds of 15-month-old infants demonstrate that babies do the same thing—and will try to appease adults they consider prone to anger.
“Our research suggests that babies will do whatever they can to avoid being the target of anger,” says lead author Betty Repacholi, a faculty scientist at the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS). “At this young of an age, they have already worked out a way to stay safe. It’s a smart, adaptive response.”
The 1st experiment
In one of the studies, published in the journal Developmental Psychology, researchers wanted to see how exposing babies to an unfamiliar adult’s anger toward another adult would affect the babies’ behavior in a new situation. Do the babies assume that the initial negative encounters would happen again?
“Our research shows that babies are carefully paying attention to the emotional reactions of adults,” says coauthor Andrew Meltzoff, codirector of I-LABS. “Babies make snap judgments as to whether an adult is anger-prone. They pigeonhole adults more quickly than we thought.”
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The babies, 270 15-months-old that included a mix of boys and girls, sat on their parents’ laps across the table from a researcher called the “Experimenter.” The baby saw the Experimenter demonstrating how to play with a series of toys.
In each trial, a second researcher, the “Emoter,” reacted in either a neutral way (“That’s entertaining.”) or negative way by saying “That’s aggravating!” in a stern voice when the Experimenter performed her action on the toy. The Emoter’s reaction was the same for each toy.
Then the baby had a chance to play with the same toy.
“Babies will do whatever they can to avoid being the target of anger.”
The researchers measured how readily the babies imitated the Experimenter’s actions. Babies who witnessed the angry outburst were less likely to play with the toy or to duplicate the adult’s actions than babies who saw a neutral reaction from the Emoter. Next, the Experimenter showed the baby how to play with a new toy. This time, however, the previously angry Emoter now appeared to be neutral.
“We wanted to see if babies would treat the anger they had seen before as a one-off event or whether they see it as being part of the person’s character,” Repacholi says.
When given the chance to play with the new toy, the babies who knew the Emoter’s angry history avoided playing with the toy, compared with the babies who were in the neutral group.
“It’s as if the baby doesn’t trust that the Emoter is now calm,” Repacholi says. “Once babies have detected that someone’s prone to anger, it’s hard to dismiss. They’re taking a better-safe-than-sorry approach, where they’re not going to take a risk even though the situation has apparently changed.”
The 2nd study
The second study, published in the journal Infancy, suggests that babies are capable of coming up with appeasement gestures in situations involving anger-prone adults. The findings are published online and will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Infancy.
Using a similar experimental setup, another group of babies—72 15-month-olds, with an even number of boys and girls—first observed either the “angry” or “neutral” Emoter’s reaction to toys used by the Experimenter.
Then, the twist: the Experimenter brought out new toys designed to be highly desirable to the infants, such as a toy with a small ball that lit up when rotated.
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Sitting on their parents’ laps, the babies got to play with the appealing toy briefly before the Emoter—who had a neutral facial expression and wasn’t showing any anger at this point—asked for a turn.
What did the babies do? Those who had previously seen the Emoter be angry readily relinquished the toys. That is, 69 percent of babies in the “anger” group gave up the toys compared to 46 percent of babies in the “neutral” group.
“I was so surprised to see the infants give the toys away—it was like they were appeasing or compromising with the adult,” Repacholi says. “They didn’t want to risk making the previously angry adult mad again. They didn’t act this way with the other adult who had not shown anger
What the studies say about babies
- They make quick judgments about people’s emotional qualities.
- They can have negative emotions dominate their perceptions of a person’s character.
- They tend to assume a person with a history of anger will become angry again even if the situation has changed.
“Our studies show that babies are very tuned into other people’s anger,” Repacholi says. “For parents, it’s important to be mindful of how powerful that emotion is for babies.”
“The babies are ’emotion detectives.’ They watch and listen to our emotions, remember how we acted in the past, and use this to predict how we will act in the future,” says Meltzoff. “How long these first impressions last is an important question.”
Source: University of Washington
