Early reasoning about moral obligations and rights

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2021

Author dc:creator

• Tranggono Ting, Fransisca

Contributors dc:contributor

• Baillargeon, Renée
• Hyde, Daniel C
• Pomerantz, Eva M
• Cohen, Dov
• Stern, Chadly D

• Infant Cognition
• Moral Development
• Social Cognition

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2020 Fransisca Tranggono Ting

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/109629

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/109629