Agency attribution in infancy: evidence for a negativity bias

J Kiley Hamlin; Andrew S Baron

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0096112

Agency attribution in infancy: evidence for a negativity bias

PLoS One. 2014 May 6;9(5):e96112. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0096112. eCollection 2014.

Authors

J Kiley Hamlin¹, Andrew S Baron¹

Affiliation

¹ Departent of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Abstract

Adults tend to attribute agency and intention to the causes of negative outcomes, even if those causes are obviously mechanical. Is this over-attribution of negative agency the result of years of practice with attributing agency to actual conspecifics, or is it a foundational aspect of our agency-detection system, present in the first year of life? Here we present two experiments with 6-month-old infants, in which they attribute agency to a mechanical claw that causes a bad outcome, but not to a claw that causes a good outcome. Control experiments suggest that the attribution stems directly from the negativity of the outcome, rather than from physical cues present in the stimuli. Together, these results provide evidence for striking developmental continuity in the attribution of agency to the causes of negative outcomes.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Female
Humans
Infant
Internal-External Control*
Male
Negativism*
Psychology, Child*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to the first author. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.