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Updated: Apr 30, 2026

Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults
Published on: October 19, 2014
Agency attribution in infancy: evidence for a negativity bias
J Kiley Hamlin1, Andrew S Baron1
1Departent of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Abstract:
Adults tend to attribute agency and intention to the causes of negative outcomes, even if those causes are obviously mechanical. Is this over-attribution of negative agency the result of years of practice with attributing agency to actual conspecifics, or is it a foundational aspect of our agency-detection system, present in the first year of life? Here we present two experiments with 6-month-old infants, in which they attribute agency to a mechanical claw that causes a bad outcome, but not to a claw that causes a good outcome. Control experiments suggest that the attribution stems directly from the negativity of the outcome, rather than from physical cues present in the stimuli. Together, these results provide evidence for striking developmental continuity in the attribution of agency to the causes of negative outcomes.
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