A study of 108 2.5-year-old toddlers and 90 1-year-old infants found that young children expect an individual who witnesses a wrongdoer harming a victim to indirectly punish the wrongdoer by withholding subsequent aid, but only if the individual and the victim belong to the same group, suggesting that early expectation about indirect third-party punishment is driven by an abstract sense of ingroup support.
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Article #18-17849: "Toddlers and infants expect individuals to refrain from helping an ingroup victim's aggressor," by Fransisca Ting, Zijing He, and Renée Baillargeon.
MEDIA CONTACT: Renée Baillargeon, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL; tel: 217-333-5557; e-mail: rbaillar@illinois.edu; Fransisca Ting, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL; tel: 217-417-0550; e-mail: fting2@illinois.edu
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences