Conférence - Gergely Csibra : Tracking Social Relations and Evaluating Potential Partners in Infancy and Childhood

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2025-2026

Conférence - Gergely Csibra : Tracking Social Relations and Evaluating Potential Partners in Infancy and Childhood

Gergely Csibra

Central European University, Vienne

Résumé :

It is a widespread assumption in developmental psychology that infants and young children evaluate others' actions based on prosocial norms, attribute enduring pro- or anti-social traits to individuals in observed interactions, and choose social partners accordingly. Our studies did not confirm these assumptions. While they show that infants expect that others' actions, including collaborative joint actions, adhere to instrumental norms according to a "naïve utility calculus", we found no evidence that children would understand "helping" as a second-order goal aimed at increasing another agent's utility before 3- to 4 years of age. Similarly, while infants around the first birthday demonstrate principled understanding of transfer-based interactions (giving, taking), including conflicts of access to resources, they interpret these events as reflecting long-term relationships between the parties rather than revealing individual dispositions. In a foraging game, we tested the hypothesis that children select social partners based on dispositional attributions. Although even 5-year-olds recognized behaviors that could potentially be exploited in a cooperative situation, children did not rely on these behavioral features in choosing good cooperative partners until about the age of 7. These findings confirm that while infants display a sophisticated understanding of social relations and preschoolers conceive helping actions as fulfilling the second-order goal of increasing the utility of someone else's action, children do not frame these inferences as manifestations of individual traits until school age.