Infant Differential Behavioral Responding to Discrete Emotions

Emotional communication regulates the behaviors of social partners. Research on individuals’ respondingto others’ emotions typically compares responses to a single negative emotion compared withresponses to a neutral or positive emotion. Furthermore, coding of such responses routinely measuresurface level features of the behavior (e.g., approach vs. avoidance) rather than its underlying function(e.g., the goal of the approach or avoidant behavior). This investigation examined infants’ responding toothers’ emotional displays across 5 discrete emotions: joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. Specifically,16-, 19-, and 24-month-old infants observed an adult communicate a discrete emotion toward a stimulusduring a naturalistic interaction. Infants’ responses were coded to capture the function of their behaviors(e.g., exploration, prosocial behavior, and security seeking). The results revealed a number of instancesindicating that infants use different functional behaviors in response to discrete emotions. Differences inbehaviors across emotions were clearest in the 24-month-old infants, though younger infants alsodemonstrated some differential use of behaviors in response to discrete emotions. This is the firstcomprehensive study to identify differences in how infants respond with goal-directed behaviors todiscrete emotions. Additionally, the inclusion of a function-based coding scheme and interpersonalparadigms may be informative for future emotion research with children and adults. Possible developmentalaccounts for the observed behaviors and the benefits of coding techniques emphasizing thefunction of social behavior over their form are discussed