title: "Aren't you supposed to be sad?" Infants do not treat a stoic person as an unreliable emoter.
abstract: The current study examined how 18-month-old infants react to a "stoic" person, that is, someone who displays a neutral facial expression following negative experiences. Infants first watched a series of events during which an actor had an object stolen from her. In one condition, infants then saw the actor display sadness, while she remained neutral in the other condition. Then, all infants interacted with the actor in emotional referencing, instrumental helping, empathic helping, and imitation tasks. Results revealed that during the exposure phase, infants in both groups looked an equal amount of time at the scene and engaged in similar levels of hypothesis testing. However, infants in the sad group expressed more concern toward the actor than those in the neutral group. No differences were found between the two groups on the interactive tasks. This conservative test of selective learning and altruism shows that, at 18 months, infants are sensitive to the valence of emotional expressions following negative events but also consider an actor's neutral expression just as appropriate as a sad expression following a negative experience. These findings represent an important contribution to research on the emergence of selective trust during infancy.
authors: Centre for Research in Human Development, Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Canada. Electronic address: ss_chiar@live.concordia.ca.
authors: Sabrina S
authors: SS
authors: Chiarella
authors: Centre for Research in Human Development, Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Canada.
authors: Diane
authors: D
authors: Poulin-Dubois
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D003210:Concept Formation; D003469:Culture; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D002666:Psychology, Child
keywords: Emotional development; Empathy; Infancy; Prosocial behavior; Selective trust
references: Infant Behav Dev. 2011 Apr;34(2):303-9
references: 21353308
references: Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 1997;1(1):3-25
references: 15647126
references: Dev Sci. 2008 Sep;11(5):761-70
references: 18801132
references: Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2011 Apr 12;366(1567):1179-87
references: 21357240
references: Cognition. 2003 Apr;87(3):179-208
references: 12684199
references: Child Dev. 1996 Dec;67(6):3219-37
references: 9071778
references: Cognition. 2014 Feb;130(2):204-16
references: 24321623
references: Dev Psychobiol. 2002 Mar;40(2):183-92
references: 11857332
references: Trends Cogn Sci. 2011 Feb;15(2):68-76
references: 21215677
references: Psychol Bull. 2008 May;134(3):383-403
references: 18444702
references: Child Dev. 2010 Nov-Dec;81(6):1814-27
references: 21077866
references: Infancy. 2013 Aug 1;18(Suppl 1):E81-E96
references: 25071421
references: Dev Sci. 2007 Jan;10(1):135-8
references: 17181711
references: J Exp Child Psychol. 2013 May;115(1):16-29
references: 23454359
references: Cognition. 2009 Sep;112(3):367-80
references: 19540473
references: Psychophysiology. 1981 Mar;18(2):101-6
references: 7220762
references: Dev Psychol. 1998 Sep;34(5):1017-25
references: 9779747
references: Infancy. 2007 May;11(3):271-294
references: 33412734
references: J Exp Child Psychol. 2010 Aug;106(4):208-20
references: 20427052
references: Emotion. 2012 Jun;12(3):430-6
references: 22148997
references: Infancy. 2013 Aug;18(Suppl 1):E46-E68
references: 26807045
references: Dev Psychol. 2013 Mar;49(3):404-18
references: 22889395
references: Infant Behav Dev. 2011 Jun;34(3):447-58
references: 21600660
references: Emotion. 2008 Dec;8(6):737-52
references: 19102585
references: Dev Psychol. 2013 Jun;49(6):1132-8
references: 22889390
references: Dev Psychol. 2009 Mar;45(2):534-43
references: 19271837
references: Br J Dev Psychol. 2009 Sep;27(Pt 3):649-67
references: 19994573
references: Dev Psychol. 2001 Nov;37(6):826-38
references: 11699756
references: Dev Psychol. 2010 Jul;46(4):815-26
references: 20604604