Babies are good judges of character
This just in: Babies know if you’re a liar or a jerk.
A new study, published by the journal Infant Behavior and Development, has revealed that babies can identify dishonest behaviour and will avoid imitating adults exhibiting “irrational or inefficient” behaviour.
"Specifically, infants choose not to learn from someone who they perceive as unreliable,” study researcher Diane Poulin-Dubois told LiveScience.
Researchers took 60 babies, all 13 or 16 months old, and divided the youngsters into two groups. The first group was paired with “unreliable” experimenters. The adults looked inside a container and expressed excitement at what was inside. Then the babies looked inside: the box was empty.
The other babies had “reliable” adults with them, expressing excitement at what was inside the box: a toy.
Later, the babies reunited with the same adults for another experiment. This time, only 34 of the babies with the “unreliable” leader agreed to play along with the game, while 61 per cent of the babies in the “reliable” group followed the adult’s lead.
[See also: Cute kid pleads for a doughnut]
“This shows infants will imitate behaviour from a reliable adult,” said researcher Ivy Brooker. “In contrast, the same behaviour performed by an unreliable adult is interpreted as irrational or inefficient, therefore not worth imitating.”
"Like older children, infants keep track of an individual's history of being accurate or inaccurate and use this information to guide their subsequent learning," Poulin-Dubois said.
Next time you’re playing with little ones, play fair.
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