Majority Influence in Infancy

Abstract

Majority influence is an integral aspect of many human societies; it is an important catalyst of learning and promotes transmission of cultural knowledge. Given the importance that majorities play in human societies, it is not surprising that young children are sensitive to information gleaned from majorities. A growing body of evidence raises the interesting, yet unexplored possibility that, like preschool-aged children and adults, infants’ behaviour might be influenced by majorities. Using a novel eye-tracking paradigm, the experiments reported across the three manuscripts examined the characteristics of, and extent to which, majorities bias infants’ behaviour in different contexts, primarily via visual attention. Chapter 2 examined whether a majority influenced 18-month-old infants' preference (i.e., looking time and behavioural preference) for two novel toys. The results across two experiments revealed that infants' visual preference for a novel toy was not influenced by the majority if they were first provided with experience with the toys, but was marginally influenced if infants received no prior experience with the toys. These experiments provided useful insights into the role that context and social cues play in guiding infants' attention. By introducing an element of ambiguity (using boxes rather than novel toys) and adding cues to boost majority salience, Chapter 3 examined whether 12- and 19-month-old infants' attention to a novel stimulus was influenced by the majority. The findings across two experiments provided the first known evidence that infants’ attention is guided by majority information at 19-, but not at 12-months of age. Further, the results indicated that infants’ attention was guided by a majority only when all majority members are shown to prefer one object to another. Finally, Chapter 4 examined the role of novel social categories and social affiliation in guiding 19- and 24-month-old infants' expectations of group members and further, whether infants' attention for novel stimuli would be biased by these expectations. The results indicated no influence on infants' attention to novel stimuli based on social categories or social affiliation across both age groups. However, looking time patterns towards events leading up to the test phase among 24-month-old infants indicated interesting trends in their understanding of groups as cohesive units. Together, the findings across the three manuscripts offer preliminary evidence of majority influence as well as the role of social cues in infants' expectations of group cohesiveness in driving visual attention early in development. Crucially, these findings suggest, to our knowledge, the first known evidence of majority bias at 19-months. Infants’ sensitivity towards the majority at the visual attention level is the likely foundation for subsequent selectivity to majority information across domains.