Babies make quick judgements about adults from early on

Updated
Study: Babies Make Quick Judgments About Adults
Study: Babies Make Quick Judgments About Adults



Adults are often quick to judge babies based on first impressions; infants are often quickly labelled as 'shy' or 'easy to please', for example.

And now a new study has found that babies make similar judgements about adults too.

An experiment involving hundreds of babies revealed that they are able to observe the emotional tenor of adult interactions and self-censor their behavior accordingly.

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The study found that babies register how people interact with each other and are able to tailor their reactions accordingly, as this video shows.

The research, published in the March issue of Developmental Psychology, was carried out to see how exposing babies to an unfamiliar adult's anger toward another adult would affect the babies' behavior in a new situation.

"Our research shows that babies are carefully paying attention to the emotional reactions of adults," said co-author Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of I-LABS.

"Babies make snap judgments as to whether an adult is anger-prone. They pigeonhole adults more quickly than we thought."

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