Babies expectations for helpers!

8- and 9-month-old Babies

This study will take place on a video call, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Schedule a time to participate” button will send you to an online calendar where you can select a date and time that works for you. During the study, your child will watch animated videos, in which one character chooses to help, and another chooses to hinder, two other characters. We will then monitor your baby’s looking time to measure if they expect the helper, compared to the hinderer, to be more likely to help other characters in the future.

We know that babies notice when someone helps someone else, and that they expect helpers to be nice to the people they have helped in the past. Babies seem to use their observations of helping to identify positive relationships between people and expect helpers to act in other “nice” and helpful ways towards those they have helped in the past. In this study, we ask if babies use a character's consistent choice to help multiple other characters to form beliefs that they will be generally helpful to new characters in the future. This study will help us better understand how babies understand people’s relationships, and traits like "nice", by asking whether they use people's consistent helping behavior to determine if helpers will act in "nice" ways to new people or just the people they have interacted with in the past.

15 minutes

You will receive a $5 gift card to the Amazon US site (https://www.amazon.com/) for completing this study. In order to receive this payment, your infant will need to be within our specified age range on the day of the study appointment, your infant will need to be visible throughout the video, and you will only be able to receive one gift card per infant. You will receive payment within 1 week of participation.