Social information reduces infants’ avoidance of plants

Abstract Plants have been a fundamental component of human diets over evolutionary time. However, plants pose dangers to humans due to the variety of toxic chemical and mechanical defenses they manufacture. Accordingly, recent developmental work has shown that infants exhibit a reluctance to touch plants—a behavioral strategy that is an effective way of mitigating plant dangers. A similar protective avoidance strategy occurs in the food domain, food neophobia, which can be reduced by social facilitation. In the current study we investigated whether infants modify their behavior toward plants when social information is present. We presented 8- to 18-month-olds with plants and control objects after an adult conveyed information about each object and measured infants’ touch behavior. The results provide the first evidence that social information reduces infants’ reluctance to touch plants and converge with previous findings that social facilitation reduces food neophobia. This provides a broader evolutionary framework for understanding food learning and food rejection early in life.