Caregivers mentally simulate infants, treating them as human before they objectively qualify

Evidence

The newborn infant bears minimal resemblance to the adult that it will become. Its brain has one third of the cortical surface area that it will have as an adult (Hill et al., 2010), and its visual acuity, contrast, and field of vision is considerably limited (Farzin, Rivera, & Whitney, 2010). Objectively, the newborn is strange, unhumanlike—its form is out of proportion, it makes funny noises, it has a distinctive smell, and its movements are jerky and uncoordinated. Remarkably, the infant is not seen objectively, least of all by its parents. This gap between the “objective” (or embodied) infant and the “subjective” (or enacted) infant merits research from embodied and evolutionary perspectives precisely because the objective infant seems to lie beyond the bounds of common folk psychology. Caregivers attribute a subjective life to infants, simulating desires and intentions on behalf of the newborn without regard for its initial limitations. Such attributions, of a theory of mind so to speak, appear essential to bringing the infant into a human community. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 411

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels outgroup dehumanization literature: the same mind-attribution machinery that humans extend to infants can be withdrawn from outgroup members. Contrast with Allport on how perceived difference gates empathy.
• DEEPTHINKING: A potent inversion: mind-attribution to a barely human newborn is a baseline prosocial act, yet the same simulation capacity is what in-group/out-group dynamics switch off — the machinery’s flip side is the whole prejudice problem.
• SEED: Essay angle: dehumanization as the reverse operation of the mind-attribution reflex parents perform on newborns — one cognitive capability, two moral outcomes.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 411