But the next finding surprised the researchers: When the puppet that dropped the ball did not share the babies’ taste in food, the infants preferred the mean puppet to the helper. In other words: Babies prefer someone who is nice to an individual similar to themselves, but they also prefer someone who is mean to a dissimilar individual.
That study doesn’t seem to have been looking for empathic behaviour, but at preference. I’ll admit, I’ve not ready the study itself but, from the summary you’ve linked, it seems the infants were basically shown a puppet show and then given the opportunity to reach for any of the puppets. I wouldn’t expect any particular display of empathy there, as even babies can tell a puppet from a living creature a lot of the time. That they expressed preferences for particular puppets that had shown certain behaviours is interesting, but I wonder about the confounding factors like the apoearance and even quality of puppetry. We know that babies have individual preferences towards certain face types and general appearances, so this probably carries over into a scenario like this.
So, they have less empathy for the outgroup of puppets?
That’s not a strong argument for inborn empathy.
While I can’t speak for you, I remember imagining inanimate objects had feelings as a kid, which made choices to reject something absurdly difficult.
Facial preferences don’t help, either, and are part of an established body of research showing the early, undirected manifestation of discriminatory biases.
On racism, for example
Race is a multidimensional and socially constructed (Smedley & Smedley, 2005) lens through which even infants engage with the social world. Research from racially and culturally diverse contexts has shown that 3-month-olds prefer faces from particular racial groups (Bar-Haim, Ziv, Lamy, & Hodes, 2006), and 9-month-olds use race to categorize faces (Anzures, Quinn, Pascalis, Slater, & Lee, 2010). Before entering preschool, 3-year-old United States-based children associate low-status racial groups with negative traits (Dunham, Chen, & Banaji, 2013; Newheiser, Dunham, Merrill, Hoosain, & Olson, 2014), and by age 4, they associate particular racial groups (e.g., Whites) with high status markers (e.g., wealth; Olson, Shutts, Kinzler, & Weisman, 2012). And United States children experience the negative consequences of living in a racialized world: seven-year-olds experience racial discrimination (Marcelo & Yates, 2019), and race-based discrimination is widespread in schools (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2018).
the APA has argued racist ideas can emerge early, so adults need to talk about race with their children earlier.
Such biases are not very empathetic and need correction.
Empathy as a moral guide usually refers to universal empathy rather than a biased, discriminatory empathy favoring only an in-group.
Infants show biases such as in-group favoritism early
That’s not empathetic.
That study doesn’t seem to have been looking for empathic behaviour, but at preference. I’ll admit, I’ve not ready the study itself but, from the summary you’ve linked, it seems the infants were basically shown a puppet show and then given the opportunity to reach for any of the puppets. I wouldn’t expect any particular display of empathy there, as even babies can tell a puppet from a living creature a lot of the time. That they expressed preferences for particular puppets that had shown certain behaviours is interesting, but I wonder about the confounding factors like the apoearance and even quality of puppetry. We know that babies have individual preferences towards certain face types and general appearances, so this probably carries over into a scenario like this.
So, they have less empathy for the outgroup of puppets? That’s not a strong argument for inborn empathy.
While I can’t speak for you, I remember imagining inanimate objects had feelings as a kid, which made choices to reject something absurdly difficult.
Facial preferences don’t help, either, and are part of an established body of research showing the early, undirected manifestation of discriminatory biases. On racism, for example
the APA has argued racist ideas can emerge early, so adults need to talk about race with their children earlier. Such biases are not very empathetic and need correction.
Empathy is a skill that needs development.