A joint research from the Kyoto University and Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan studied infant behavior by showing them an animated video of "social interaction" and recorded their sympathetic responses.
Sympathy is a human ability to show concern towards others and the most essential part of human co-existence, which is poorly understood. In a new study by a team of Japanese researchers, evidence of infants as young as ten months old displaying sympathetic behavior toward others in pain and distress in their non-verbal ways, has come to light.
This is the first study to understand infants' response towards victims. Researchers of the study, Yasuhiro Kanakogi, Yuko Okumura, Shoji Itakura from the Department of Psychology, Kyoto University, Japan and Yasuyuki Inoue, Michiteru Kitazaki from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, proved that infants develop a sense of sympathy as young as ten months after birth.
For this study, researchers showed an animated video of a blue ball and a yellow cube to a group of 40 babies. Researchers divided the babies into two groups of 20 each and showed them different videos. First group saw a video where the yellow cube was chased by the blue ball and was hit seven times before cube was finally smashed. In another video shown to the second group of babies, the two shapes moved independently without interacting but the yellow cube was smashed instantly.
Researchers also swapped the roles of the shapes where the blue ball was the victim and the yellow cube became the bully. After the video was shown to both the groups, babies were shown a real yellow cube and a blue ball. The babies could reach out to any shape independently.
Researchers found that when the babies saw the video of the victim being beaten up before smashed, the babies reached out for the victim most of the time. Whereas in the other group video where the beating up was eliminated, babies randomly chose the shapes, nine reached out for the one being smashed and eleven went for the bully.
In a second experiment, a similar video was shown to 24 babies aged only 10 months, but a new red cylinder shape was included in the video. The red shape remained neutral on the screen. After watching the videos, babies were given an option to choose from neutral-or-bully option or neutral-or-victim. 10 out of 12 babies picked up neutral red cylinder over the bully shape and 10 babies from the second half group picked up victim over the neutral option.
The authors of the study concluded that infants "not only evaluate the roles of victims and aggressors in interactions but also show rudimentary sympathy toward others in distress based on that evaluation."
The findings of the study are published online in the journal PLoS ONE.
