Infants' Expectations for Helping in Imitators

Abstract

Human infants seem to make positive social inferences about individuals who imitate others. In three preregistered experiments we test if these inferences include an expectation that imitators will be helpful, and also ask if the inferences infants make are about imitators' dispositions or primarily about their relationships. In each experiment 8- to 9-month-old infants saw one individual imitate, and another individual not imitate, the same target social partner. When the imitator and non-imitator had the opportunity to help the target individual they had previously interacted with, infants looked longer when the non-imitator helped than when the imitator helped. However, when the potential recipient of help was a new social partner, infants' looking did not differ when the imitator or non-imitator helped. Overall, these results support the hypothesis that infants perceive imitation as prosocial or affiliative and thus expect imitators to be helpful. However, these expectations are limited to inferences about a specific prosocial relationship between the imitator and their target.