The Study of Early Social Evaluation: Contextualizing Failures to Replicate and Looking Forward

In classic research, Hamlin et al. (2007) found that infants preferentially reach to agents who help others over agents who hinder others. These early findings provided evidence that infants may engage in social evaluation. There have now been multiple failures to replicate the original findings, and these failed replication attempts have called into question whether infants engage in social evaluation. In the present paper, we contextualize these failed replication attempts in the broader literature. We review evidence that infants and toddlers evaluate a range of social behaviors, including acts of physical harm, resource distribution, comforting, imitation, and dominance. We also review evidence that infants and toddlers have demonstrated other behaviors, beyond preferential reaching, that suggest that they engage in social evaluation. The larger body of evidence therefore suggests that early social evaluation is a real phenomenon. We discuss how cognitive scientists can better study early social evaluation moving forward.