关键词: 婴儿, 社会评价, 个体差异, 气质

Abstract: Social evaluation refers to a human being's capacity to assess the behavior and intentions of others in a social context. As social beings, humans inhabit a profoundly interconnected world characterized by unceasing interpersonal interactions. In this continuum, the manner in which individuals evaluate their peers stands as the foundation of comprehending the world. Particularly, early social assessment serves as a precursor variable in the development of moral and pro-social behaviors in subsequent years, a pivotal factor in shaping an individual's future pro-social tendencies. On one hand, social evaluation aids in identifying fitting social companions, steering clear of inappropriate or hazardous individuals, and making judicious decisions. On the other hand, it assumes a pivotal role in kindling an individual's pro-social inclinations, guiding prudent behavioral choices, molding pro-social conduct, and fostering moral maturation. The capacity for social evaluation in adults primarily manifests through their nimble acquisition of meaningful insights from others' emotional, behavioral, and postural cues, subsequently enabling them to formulate corresponding assessments and behavioral responses. Similarly, infants exhibit the capacity to discern behavioral cues exhibited by others during social interactions, thereby extrapolating insights into their motives and intentions and making apt assessments. In 2007 Hamlin et al. published a study in Nature showing that 6-month-old infants possessed social evaluative skills, responding differently to "helping" and "hindering" behaviors of individuals in social interactions, and showed a greater preference for helpers (pro-social agents). Since then, researchers have continuously challenged the replicability of this result. In the present study, we used Hamlin et al.'s (2007) classic 'helper-hinderer' choice paradigm and a violation of expectation paradigm to examine the choice preferences and gaze duration of Chinese infants (6.32 ± 0.34 months of age; 179 in total, 86 were girls) in a social evaluation task, and its relationship with infants' gender and temperament. The results of the present study showed that infants' gaze duration was significantly higher when a third party approached the hinderer than when a third party approached the helper in the expectation violation task; however, infants did not show a preference for the helper in the behavioral choice task as reported by Hamlin et al. However, infants who scored higher on the extroversion dimension of temperament were more likely to choose "helper" on the manual choice task. In general, results suggested that 6-month-old infants may already have the social evaluation ability to understand behavior and infer others' evaluation, but there are some individual differences in this ability, which may be related to the infants' temperament.

Key words: infants, social evaluation, individual differences, temperament