{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/109629"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/109629","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Early reasoning about moral obligations and rights","abstract":"Recent studies suggest that infants have the ability to reason about how individuals should act toward others, and that this early moral reasoning is guided by at least four moral principles: fairness, harm avoidance, ingroup support and authority. For example, infants expect an individual to divide windfall resources equally between similar recipients (e.g., Buyukozer-Dawkins, et al., 2019) and to provide help to an ingroup member in need (helping or ignoring an outgroup member in need are both viewed as acceptable; e.g., Jin & Baillargeon, 2017). Here, I built on these and related findings and in 7 experiments, I addressed two major questions. First, is it the case that early moral expectations are normative in nature and carry a sense of obligation? Second, whom do infants perceive as having moral rights? In Experiments 1-3, 18-month-old infants showed a preference for a character who helped an outgroup (and thus performed a supererogatory action she was not obligated to do) over a character who helped an ingroup (and thus performed an action she was obligated to do). These results provide support for the idea that early moral expectations are not mere reflections of learned behavioral regularities; rather, they are prescriptive in nature, outlining what an individual should do in a particular situation. In Experiments 4-7, we found that infants expect only novel animates (entities that are both self-propelled and agentive) to be treated fairly; they do not extend this expectation to entities that are only self-propelled or only agentive. Furthermore, infants perceive humans (animates) as having reduced moral rights if they display defective animacy cues, such as behaving in an irrational manner. Together, these findings indicate that early human moral cognition is remarkably sophisticated and provides a rich foundation for infants’ adaptation to their social worlds.","abstract_html":"Recent studies suggest that infants have the ability to reason about how individuals should act toward others, and that this early moral reasoning is guided by at least four moral principles: fairness, harm avoidance, ingroup support and authority. For example, infants expect an individual to divide windfall resources equally between similar recipients (e.g., Buyukozer-Dawkins, et al., 2019) and to provide help to an ingroup member in need (helping or ignoring an outgroup member in need are both viewed as acceptable; e.g., Jin & Baillargeon, 2017). Here, I built on these and related findings and in 7 experiments, I addressed two major questions. First, is it the case that early moral expectations are normative in nature and carry a sense of obligation? Second, whom do infants perceive as having moral rights? In Experiments 1-3, 18-month-old infants showed a preference for a character who helped an outgroup (and thus performed a supererogatory action she was not obligated to do) over a character who helped an ingroup (and thus performed an action she was obligated to do). These results provide support for the idea that early moral expectations are not mere reflections of learned behavioral regularities; rather, they are prescriptive in nature, outlining what an individual should do in a particular situation. In Experiments 4-7, we found that infants expect only novel animates (entities that are both self-propelled and agentive) to be treated fairly; they do not extend this expectation to entities that are only self-propelled or only agentive. Furthermore, infants perceive humans (animates) as having reduced moral rights if they display defective animacy cues, such as behaving in an irrational manner. Together, these findings indicate that early human moral cognition is remarkably sophisticated and provides a rich foundation for infants’ adaptation to their social worlds.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Tranggono Ting, Fransisca"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Psychology","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Baillargeon, Renée","Hyde, Daniel C","Pomerantz, Eva M","Cohen, Dov","Stern, Chadly D"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2021,"date_issued":"2021-03-05T21:47:31Z","date_published":"2021-03-05T21:47:31Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:50Z","subjects":["Infant Cognition","Moral Development","Social Cognition"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright 2020 Fransisca Tranggono Ting"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/109629","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Baillargeon, Renée","Hyde, Daniel C","Pomerantz, Eva M","Cohen, Dov","Stern, Chadly D"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Tranggono Ting, Fransisca"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2021-03-05T21:47:31Z","2023-03-05T21:47:41Z","2020-12-03","2020-12"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text","Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Psychology"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Infant Cognition","Moral Development","Social Cognition"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2020 Fransisca Tranggono Ting"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/109629"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Recent studies suggest that infants have the ability to reason about how individuals should act toward others, and that this early moral reasoning is guided by at least four moral principles: fairness, harm avoidance, ingroup support and authority. For example, infants expect an individual to divide windfall resources equally between similar recipients (e.g., Buyukozer-Dawkins, et al., 2019) and to provide help to an ingroup member in need (helping or ignoring an outgroup member in need are both viewed as acceptable; e.g., Jin & Baillargeon, 2017). Here, I built on these and related findings and in 7 experiments, I addressed two major questions. First, is it the case that early moral expectations are normative in nature and carry a sense of obligation? Second, whom do infants perceive as having moral rights? In Experiments 1-3, 18-month-old infants showed a preference for a character who helped an outgroup (and thus performed a supererogatory action she was not obligated to do) over a character who helped an ingroup (and thus performed an action she was obligated to do). These results provide support for the idea that early moral expectations are not mere reflections of learned behavioral regularities; rather, they are prescriptive in nature, outlining what an individual should do in a particular situation. In Experiments 4-7, we found that infants expect only novel animates (entities that are both self-propelled and agentive) to be treated fairly; they do not extend this expectation to entities that are only self-propelled or only agentive. Furthermore, infants perceive humans (animates) as having reduced moral rights if they display defective animacy cues, such as behaving in an irrational manner. Together, these findings indicate that early human moral cognition is remarkably sophisticated and provides a rich foundation for infants’ adaptation to their social worlds.","Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2022-12-01","The student, Fransisca Tranggono Ting, accepted the attached license on 2020-12-03 at 10:52.","The student, Fransisca Tranggono Ting, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2020-12-03 at 10:56.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2020-12-03 at 13:28.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #16054 on 2021-03-04 at 16:33:37","Made available in DSpace on 2021-03-05T21:47:31Z (GMT). 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For example, infants expect an individual to divide windfall resources equally between similar recipients (e.g., Buyukozer-Dawkins, et al., 2019) and to provide help to an ingroup member in need (helping or ignoring an outgroup member in need are both viewed as acceptable; e.g., Jin & Baillargeon, 2017). Here, I built on these and related findings and in 7 experiments, I addressed two major questions. First, is it the case that early moral expectations are normative in nature and carry a sense of obligation? Second, whom do infants perceive as having moral rights? In Experiments 1-3, 18-month-old infants showed a preference for a character who helped an outgroup (and thus performed a supererogatory action she was not obligated to do) over a character who helped an ingroup (and thus performed an action she was obligated to do). These results provide support for the idea that early moral expectations are not mere reflections of learned behavioral regularities; rather, they are prescriptive in nature, outlining what an individual should do in a particular situation. In Experiments 4-7, we found that infants expect only novel animates (entities that are both self-propelled and agentive) to be treated fairly; they do not extend this expectation to entities that are only self-propelled or only agentive. Furthermore, infants perceive humans (animates) as having reduced moral rights if they display defective animacy cues, such as behaving in an irrational manner. Together, these findings indicate that early human moral cognition is remarkably sophisticated and provides a rich foundation for infants’ adaptation to their social worlds.","Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2022-12-01","The student, Fransisca Tranggono Ting, accepted the attached license on 2020-12-03 at 10:52.","The student, Fransisca Tranggono Ting, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2020-12-03 at 10:56.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2020-12-03 at 13:28.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #16054 on 2021-03-04 at 16:33:37","Made available in DSpace on 2021-03-05T21:47:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 TRANGGONOTING-DISSERTATION-2020.pdf: 3102561 bytes, checksum: ac29e5b4a905c3eeb5b19e67eb8c2048 (MD5) LICENSE.txt: 4221 bytes, checksum: 7fec45721e0a7d71daa0804def4316ef (MD5) Previous issue date: 2020-12-03","Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 117335 Lift date: 2023-03-05T21:47:41Z Reason: Author requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD system","Author requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD system","Limited"],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/109629"],"dc:language":["en"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 2020 Fransisca Tranggono Ting"],"dc:subject":["Infant Cognition","Moral Development","Social Cognition"],"dc:title":["Early reasoning about moral obligations and rights"],"dc:type":["text","Thesis"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Psychology"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:50Z"}