Study of developmental origin and process of fairness in infancy

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25245067
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Experimental psychology
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: Itakura Shoji 京都大学, 文学研究科, 教授 (50211735)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 藤田 和生 京都大学, 文学研究科, 教授 (80183101) ; 北崎 充晃 豊橋技術科学大学, 工学(系)研究科(研究院), 准教授 (90292739)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 公平感 / 乳児 / 脳波 / 向社会行動

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Infants expect agents that previously helped another agent to perform egalitarian distributions, but　did not held such expectation about agents that previously hindered another agent.　We show for the first time that infants’ link agents’ helping and distributive actions. This ability is important because it may help the development of reasoning about agents’ stable moral traits. Results provide support for recent theories on early social evaluation skills and contraint theories on the acquisition of moral competence.
In the adults’ ERP study, participants were informed about characters' social information through their actions. One character then distributed resources fairly or unfairly, and ERP was measured at the end of the distribution. There are three principal finding. First, N200 was significantly affected by fairness. Second, a significant main effect of social information was found for P300, and third, a significant interaction of social information and fairness for LPP.

Free Research Field

発達科学