title: Friend or foe? Early social evaluation of human interactions.
abstract: We report evidence that 29-month-old toddlers and 10-month-old preverbal infants discriminate between two agents: a pro-social agent, who performs a positive (comforting) action on a human patient and a negative (harmful) action on an inanimate object, and an anti-social agent, who does the converse. The evidence shows that they prefer the former to the latter even though the agents perform the same bodily movements. Given that humans can cause physical harm to their conspecifics, we discuss this finding in light of the likely adaptive value of the ability to detect harmful human agents.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Département d'Etudes Cognitives-Ecole Normale Supérieure, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Marine
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Buon
authors.affiliation: Institut Jean Nicod, Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Département d'Etudes Cognitives-Ecole Normale Supérieure, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jacob
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Département d'Etudes Cognitives-Ecole Normale Supérieure, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Sylvie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Margules
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Département d'Etudes Cognitives-Ecole Normale Supérieure, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Brunet
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Département d'Etudes Cognitives-Ecole Normale Supérieure, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Michel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dutat
authors.affiliation: Maternité Port-Royal, Faculté de Médecine Port Royal-Cochin, APHP, Université René Descartes, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Dominique
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cabrol
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Département d'Etudes Cognitives-Ecole Normale Supérieure, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Emmanuel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Dupoux
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D002755:Choice Behavior; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D033062:Friends; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male