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Agency Attribution in Infancy: Evidence for a Negativity Bias
Adults tend to attribute agency and intention to the causes of negative outcomes, even if those causes are obviously mechanical. Is this over-attribution of negative agency the result of years of practice with attributing agency to actual conspecifics, or is it a foundational aspect of our agency-de...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4011708/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24801144 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096112 |
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author | Hamlin, J. Kiley Baron, Andrew S. |
author_facet | Hamlin, J. Kiley Baron, Andrew S. |
author_sort | Hamlin, J. Kiley |
collection | PubMed |
description | Adults tend to attribute agency and intention to the causes of negative outcomes, even if those causes are obviously mechanical. Is this over-attribution of negative agency the result of years of practice with attributing agency to actual conspecifics, or is it a foundational aspect of our agency-detection system, present in the first year of life? Here we present two experiments with 6-month-old infants, in which they attribute agency to a mechanical claw that causes a bad outcome, but not to a claw that causes a good outcome. Control experiments suggest that the attribution stems directly from the negativity of the outcome, rather than from physical cues present in the stimuli. Together, these results provide evidence for striking developmental continuity in the attribution of agency to the causes of negative outcomes. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4011708 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-40117082014-05-09 Agency Attribution in Infancy: Evidence for a Negativity Bias Hamlin, J. Kiley Baron, Andrew S. PLoS One Research Article Adults tend to attribute agency and intention to the causes of negative outcomes, even if those causes are obviously mechanical. Is this over-attribution of negative agency the result of years of practice with attributing agency to actual conspecifics, or is it a foundational aspect of our agency-detection system, present in the first year of life? Here we present two experiments with 6-month-old infants, in which they attribute agency to a mechanical claw that causes a bad outcome, but not to a claw that causes a good outcome. Control experiments suggest that the attribution stems directly from the negativity of the outcome, rather than from physical cues present in the stimuli. Together, these results provide evidence for striking developmental continuity in the attribution of agency to the causes of negative outcomes. Public Library of Science 2014-05-06 /pmc/articles/PMC4011708/ /pubmed/24801144 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096112 Text en © 2014 Hamlin, Baron http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Hamlin, J. Kiley Baron, Andrew S. Agency Attribution in Infancy: Evidence for a Negativity Bias |
title | Agency Attribution in Infancy: Evidence for a Negativity Bias |
title_full | Agency Attribution in Infancy: Evidence for a Negativity Bias |
title_fullStr | Agency Attribution in Infancy: Evidence for a Negativity Bias |
title_full_unstemmed | Agency Attribution in Infancy: Evidence for a Negativity Bias |
title_short | Agency Attribution in Infancy: Evidence for a Negativity Bias |
title_sort | agency attribution in infancy: evidence for a negativity bias |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4011708/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24801144 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096112 |
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