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recordings of another infant crying, but did not respond to the cries of an older infant, a chimpanzee, or their own cries (Martin & Clark, 1982). Early expressions of empathic distress increase in magnitude through 9 months of age (Geangu et al., 2010). Moreover, infants’ increasingly help others at home across the second year of life, such as by handing objects to others, cleaning up, putting clothes in the laundry machine, and so on ( FIGURE 7.22 ) (Dahl, 2015). Thus, at least by 2 years of age, toddlers display a seemingly natural tendency toward prosocial actions, such as comforting people in distress, help- ing others achieve goals, and sharing their belongings (Eisen- berg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006; Warneken & Tomasello, 2008). Still, prosocial behaviors do not come easily to toddlers, and certain types of situations are especially difficult, particularly those that require self-sacrifice. Eighteen- and 30-month-olds were observed in three “helping” situations that required: (1) an instrumental helping action (giving an adult an object that was dropped or out of reach), (2) an emotion-based response (providing a distressed adult with an object that would alle- viate her sadness, cold, or frustration), and (3) altruistic acts that “cost” the toddler (giving an adult an object valued by the child) (Svetlova, Nichols, & Brownell, 2010). Although younger and older toddlers readily assisted in the instrumental tasks, younger toddlers had greater difficulty with the emotion-based condition than with the instrumental helping. And, both age groups had a hard time giving up their own object. Moral Understanding and Evaluation Moral understanding and evaluation refers to identifying and liking individuals who are cooperative, empathic, or helpful, and disliking individuals who are uncooperative, unempathetic, or googly-eyed puppet who attempts (but fails) to achieve a goal, such as trying to reach the top of a hill or trying to open a box that contains a toy. On alternating presenta- tions, infants observe a “helper” who facilitates the goal (for example by bumping the puppet up the hill or open- ing the box), or a “hinderer” who prevents the goal (for example, by jumping on the box to prevent the opening attempt). By about 4–5months of age, 75%–100%of infants preferred the helper as indicated by their reaching for the helper object rather than the hinderer object. In essence, infants appear to evaluate prosocial individuals or entities positively and antisocial individuals or entities negatively (Van de Vondervoort & Hamlin, 2016) ( FIGURE 7.23 ). Moral Retribution Moral retribution is the tendency to punish individu- als who misbehave or act immorally toward others. For example, in a helper-hinderer type study, infants observed puppets who helped or hindered another puppet who was attempting to achieve a goal. They were then

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FIGURE 7.22  Infants’ natural tendency toward prosocial behaviors.  Home observations of infants’ spontaneous helping behaviors show that infants in- crease their helping behaviors across the second year, such as by giving people objects, offering help with cleaning, putting toys away, and so on. However, at younger ages (e.g., 14 to 16 months), helping is rare, and infants require a high amount of encouragement to as- sist. But, at older ages, infants spontaneously help in the absence of encouragement (as seen with the solid line showing the highest helping in toddlers under condi- tions of low encouragement). (After A. Dahl. 2015. Child Dev 86: 1080–1093. © 2015 A. Dahl. Child Development © 2015 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.)

unhelpful. Helper-hinderer studies are a common way that researchers assess infants’ moral understanding and evaluation. In such studies, experimenters present infants with “helping” versus “hurting” puppets and observe infants’ responses (Hamlin &Wynn, 2011). For example, infants may be shown a wooden, moral retribution  The tendency to punish or support individuals who misbehave PROPERTY OF OXFORD Tamis-LeMonda Child Development: Context, Culture, and Cascades 1E Sinauer Associates/OUP Morales Studio TL1e_07.22 08-31-21

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FIGURE 7.23  Helper-hinderer study.  In one of the original studies of moral evaluation, Hamlin, Wynn, and Bloom (2007) presented infants with a 3-dimensional display in which a geometric object with googly eyes, manipulated like puppets, acted out helping/hindering situations. For example, a yellow square would appear to help the circle climb the hill, whereas a red triangle would appear to push the circle down the hill. The experimenter then presented infants with a tray that con- tained the yellow square (helper) and red triangle (hinderer). Babies ages 6 and 10 months reliably preferred (reached for) the “helpful objects” to the “hindering objects.” (After J. K. Hamlin et al. 2007. Nature 450: 557–559. https://doi.org/ 10.1038/nature06288.)

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