For humans and other social species, social status matters: it determines who wins access to contested resources, territory, and mates [1-11]. Human infants are sensitive to dominance status cues [12, 13]. They expect conflicts to be won by larger individuals [14], those with more allies [15], and those with a history of winning [16-18]. But being sensitive to status cues is not enough; individuals must also use status information when deciding whom to approach and whom to avoid [19]. In many non-human species, low-status individuals avoid high-status individuals and in so doing avoid the threat of aggression [20-23]. In these species, high-status individuals commit random acts of aggression toward subordinates [23] and even commit infanticide [24-26]. However, for less reactively aggressive species [27, 28], high-status individuals may be good coalition partners. This is especially true for humans, where high-status individuals can provide guidance, protection, and knowledge to subordinates [2, 29, 30]. Indeed, human adults [31-33], human toddlers [34], and adult bonobos [35] prefer high-status individuals to low-status ones. Here, we present 6 experiments testing whether 10- to 16-month-old human infants choose high- or low-status individuals-specifically, winners or yielders in zero-sum conflicts-and find that infants choose puppets who yield. Intriguingly, toddlers just 6 months older choose the winners of such conflicts [34]. This suggests that, although humans start out like many other species, avoiding high-status others, we shift in toddlerhood to approaching high-status individuals, consistent with the idea that, for humans, high-status individuals can provide benefits to low-status ones.

A person's belief about whether intelligence can change (called their implicit theory of intelligence) predicts something about that person's thinking and behavior. People who believe intelligence is fixed (called entity theorists) attribute failure to traits (i.e., "I failed the test because I'm not smart.") and tend to be less motivated in school; those who believe intelligence is malleable (called incremental theorists) tend to attribute failure to behavior (i.e., "I failed the test because I didn't study.") and are more motivated in school. In previous studies, researchers have characterized participants as either entity or incremental theorists based on their agreement or disagreement with three statements. The present study further explored the theories-of-intelligence (TOI) construct in two ways: first, we asked whether these theories are coherent, in the sense that they show up not only in participants' responses to the three standard assessment items, but on a broad range of questions about intelligence and the brain. Second, we asked whether these theories are discrete or continuous. In other words, we asked whether people believe one thing or the other (i.e., that intelligence is malleable or fixed), or if there is a continuous range of beliefs (i.e., people believe in malleability to a greater or lesser degree). Study (1) asked participants a range of general questions about the malleability of intelligence and the brain. Study (2) asked participants more specific questions about the brains of a pair of identical twins who were separated at birth. Results showed that TOI are coherent: participants' responses to the three standard survey items are correlated with their responses to questions about the brain. But the theories are not discrete: although responses to the three standard survey items fell into a bimodal distribution, responses to the broader range of questions fell into a normal distribution suggesting the theories are continuous.

A person’s belief about whether intelligence can change (called their implicit theory of intelligence) predicts something about that person’s thinking and behavior. People who believe intelligence is fixed (called entity theorists) attribute failure to traits (i.e., “I failed the test because I’m not smart.”) and tend to be less motivated in school; those who believe intelligence is malleable (called incremental theorists) tend to attribute failure to behavior (i.e., “I failed the test because I didn’t study.”) and are more motivated in school. In previous studies, researchers have characterized participants as either entity or incremental theorists based on their agreement or disagreement with three statements. The present study further explored the theories-of-intelligence (TOI) construct in two ways: first, we asked whether these theories are coherent, in the sense that they show up not only in participants’ responses to the three standard assessment items, but on a broad range of questions about intelligence and the brain. Second, we asked whether these theories are discrete or continuous. In other words, we asked whether people believe one thing or the other (i.e., that intelligence is malleable or fixed), or if there is a continuous range of beliefs (i.e., people believe in malleability to a greater or lesser degree). Study (1) asked participants a range of general questions about the malleability of intelligence and the brain. Study (2) asked participants more specific questions about the brains of a pair of identical twins who were separated at birth. Results showed that TOI are coherent: participants’ responses to the three standard survey items are correlated with their responses to questions about the brain. But the theories are not discrete: although responses to the three standard survey items fell into a bimodal distribution, responses to the broader range of questions fell into a normal distribution suggesting the theories are continuous.

Infants are born into rich social networks and are faced with the challenge of learning about them. Previous research shows that infants learn about individuals when they observe their social interactions, but it is not clear whether they infer their social dispositions, their social relationships to one another, or both. The current studies address this question in 12-month-old infants and 16- to 18-month-old toddlers who observe social interactions involving imitation. In Studies 1 and 3, infants and toddlers expected that imitators, compared to non-imitators, would respond to their social partners’ distress. Likewise, they expected the targets of imitation, compared to non-targets, to respond to their partner’s distress. In Study 2, these expectations did not generalize to interactions with a new partner, providing evidence that infants learned about the relationships between individuals as opposed to their dispositions. In Study 3, infants’ did not make predictions about responses to laughter, suggesting that infants see imitation as indicative of a specific kind of social relationship. Together, these results provide evidence that infants and toddlers learn about the social relationships of unknown individuals by observing interactions involving imitation.

We present a theoretical and an empirical challenge to Cushman's claim that rationalization is adaptive because it allows humans to extract more accurate beliefs from our non-rational motivations for behavior. Rationalization sometimes generates more adaptive decisions by making our beliefs about the world less accurate. We suggest that the most important adaptive advantage of rationalization is instead that it increases our predictability (and therefore attractiveness) as potential partners in cooperative social interactions.

This article details a correction to article Thomas, A. J., Stanford, P. K., & Sarnecka, B. W. (2016). No Child Left Alone: Moral Judgments about Parents Affect Estimates of Risk to Children. Collabra, 2(1), 10. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.33

In recent decades, Americans have adopted a parenting norm in which every child is expected to be under constant direct adult supervision. Parents who violate this norm by allowing their children to be alone, even for short periods of time, often face harsh criticism and even legal action. This is true despite the fact that children are much more likely to be hurt, for example, in car accidents. Why then do bystanders call 911 when they see children playing in parks, but not when they see children riding in cars? Here, we present results from six studies indicating that moral judgments play a role: The less morally acceptable a parent’s reason for leaving a child alone, the more danger people think the child is in. This suggests that people’s estimates of danger to unsupervised children are affected by an intuition that parents who leave their children alone have done something morally wrong.

We present a theoretical and an empirical challenge to Cushman's claim that rationalization is adaptive because it allows humans to extract more accurate beliefs from our non-rational motivations for behavior. Rationalization sometimes generates more adaptive decisions by making our beliefs about the world less accurate. We suggest that the most important adaptive advantage of rationalization is instead that it increases our predictability (and therefore attractiveness) as potential partners in cooperative social interactions.

The decision to explore a novel option or exploit a known one — referred to as the explore-exploit trade-off — has received much attention from diverse fields of research, ranging from computer science to developmental psychology. However, much of the work on this topic has focused exclusively on an individual agent acting alone, a scenario that does not fully capture the rich social dynamics of human decision-making. In particular, the presence and participation of others can theoretically influence the decision to explore or exploit. One factor which may affect how individuals navigate the explore-exploit tradeoff is the presence of caregivers, who can help buffer the downside costs of more exploratory decision making. Across two pre-registered studies, we investigated whether children and adults predicted more or less exploratory behavior in the presence of a caregiver. In Study 1, we presented U.S. American children (N=87, ages 4 to 8) with vignettes of other children faced with the choice of exploring a novel option or exploiting a known one across a range of domains. In the vignettes, the characters either faced these decisions alone or in the presence of a parent. In Study 2, we presented the same vignettes to U.S. American adults (N=79). Across both studies, and as predicted, we found that both children and adults believed others would be more exploratory in the presence of caregivers. These results add important nuance to our understanding of how individuals navigate the explore-exploit tradeoff, and highlight the role of the social context in shaping these decisions. We aim to build on these results on future work centralizing the role and function of care in decision-making and exploration.