Babies can gauge and appease an adults anger, says study
Posted on: 24/Mar/2016 3:34:37 PM
A study published in the journal Developmental Psychology says that babies can form generalisations about others personalities and that this helps them appease adults that they consider prone to anger. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Washington.
Over 200 infants were studied for the paper. All were around 15 months old. Results showed that even with a change in the social context, babies generalise an adult`s angry behaviour.
Say the researchers, Our research suggests that babies will do whatever they can to avoid being the target of anger. At this young of an age, they have already worked out a way to stay safe. Its a smart, adaptive response. We wanted to see if babies would treat the anger they had seen before as a one-off event or whether they see it as being part of the persons character.
Our research shows that babies are carefully paying attention to the emotional reactions of adults. Babies make snap judgments as to whether an adult is anger-prone. They pigeon-hole adults more quickly than we thought. The babies are emotion detectives. They watch and listen to our emotions, remember how we acted in the past, and use this to predict how we will act in the future. How long these first impressions last is an important question.
