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Babies May Know Right From Wrong From the Beginning
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Babies may have an instinctive reaction against immorality and injustice, according to research at Yale University. Credit: Getty Images
H.L. Mencken famously said conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
Careful. That somebody might be your baby.
Parents spend a lot of time teaching their children to know the difference between right and wrong. The truth is, Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom writes in The New York Times Magazine, babies may have already figured it out.
His research suggests human beings might have an inherent sense of morality.
"Humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life," he writes. "With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone."
Sigmund Freud -- were he alive to do so -- would argue that point.
Generations of psychologists back to Freud believed (or assumed) we start life as amoral blank slates. It's up to our parents and the rest of society to teach us right from wrong. A newborn baby could be Hitler or Gandhi, depending on how he is raised.
It's the old Nature vs. Nurture argument. But Bloom says nature is underrated.
He points to an incident in his research where a 1-year-old boy took vigilante justice on a puppet. Bloom writes that he and other researchers showed the boy a puppet show, in which the puppets were playing ball and one of them was a ball hog. The boy was asked to take a treat away from the misbehaving puppet. He did more than that. He smacked the puppet upside the head.
That's very telling, Bloom writes in the magazine.
"I have long been fascinated by the capacities and inclinations of babies and children," he writes. "The mental life of young humans not only is an interesting topic in its own right; it also raises -- and can help answer -- fundamental questions of philosophy and psychology, including how biological evolution and cultural experience conspire to shape human nature."
Researchers showed babies between 6 months and 1 year old another puppet show where a colorful wooden shape with eyes tried to climb a hill. Sometimes the shape was helped by a second toy. Other times a third character pushed it down.
"Just about all the babies reached for the good guy," Bloom writes.
Another moral scenario -- involving a toy dog, box, rabbit puppet and ball -- yielded similar reactions.
"In both studies, 5-month-olds preferred the good guy," Bloom writes.
"Morality, then, is a synthesis of the biological and the cultural, of the unlearned, the discovered and the invented," he concludes in The Times.
"Babies possess certain moral foundations -- the capacity and willingness to judge the actions of others, some sense of justice, gut responses to altruism and nastiness," he writes.
Related: Babies Pick Up Mothers' Accents In The Womb
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
5-10-2010 @ 11:15PM
Pat De Range said...All well and good to know this, bit NOW this tells me that bad people are born, and they are rotten right from the get go. This I have always believed, because there are a lot of kids born to very poor family's and only a small amount of them turn out to be bad people. That is why I can't feel sorry for the kid that says they went bad because of where they came from, plenty of other kids come from the same back ground and they turn out to be really decent people. If this study is used by a lawyer correctly those mexican drug slugs could fry in the chair after their trial. Or any one for that matter who commits a serious crime against people and society. Even those rich kids that are SO rotten they make you want to rip their hair out, then other rich family's have wonderful giving kids, so I have always believed that rotten people are born that way.
Reply
5-10-2010 @ 11:13PM
Derrel said...This story forgets to mention that the positive results are from caucasian babies only.
Babies of hispanic or african heritage DO NOT have the same positive results.
In fact, african babies still DO NOT have an clear sense of morality into late childhood.
Reply
5-10-2010 @ 11:36PM
noreenarshad said...What are trying to imply, Derrel? When I was a baby, I used my hands as puppets and made stories where there was a lonely protaganist, and the second was one who didn't want to be firneds with him. I would do that to enetrtain myself while all the adults were talking and there was no one to play with me. I always sympathisized with the lonely hand. I still remember, how people would try to confuse me and stuff. I'm all for the nurture arguement, but the notion that young children are clear headed and blank_ that's got to be the most ridiculous thing you can hear. If a child has an imagination that can capture curiosiuty and wonder- or simply fun- I'm pretty sure they'de know morals right from there. Heck, I couldn't speak right when I was young, people were always confused by me. But you know one thing I understand? The concept of right and wrong was clear. Why else are children viewed as angels instead of clean blackboards? I think it's more like getting money on your birthday and seeing how others influence you to spend it. You start out "good" with $50, and over time, the lessons and stuff you learn from others around you broadens, either increasing your amount or losing some. Children are born with good hearts and a clean sense of right and wrong. But over time, thier opinions will differ, and the senses will be more complex. It's not so much as whether they're born like that and stay for the rest of thier lives, but rather how they are damaged or cared for and how it influences what they already had.
5-11-2010 @ 1:29AM
Megan said...When does it ever say that these were only Caucasian babies? I don't understand where you are getting that.
Besides that part, in most cases, I believe, Nurture can undermine Nature to the point where good-born babies go bad.
5-11-2010 @ 1:32AM
Megan said...if anything, Derrel, your comment is borderline racist, claiming that only white babies are born good. I don't know what race you are, but you either think to highly of whites or don't have any faith in your own race.
5-15-2010 @ 4:47PM
Miller said...Derrel-- why don't you go submerge your head underwater and breathe deeply!? The world has no room for racist losers like yourself. Aryan Nation, KKK, Nazis, all of those hate groups and thier members need to die a slow death. There is no such thing as any kind of racial supremacy.
5-11-2010 @ 2:41AM
JOSE said...I think half of what you say it's tru Derrel. Hispanics are raised to survive. In Latin America, you must be strong and robust in order to literately survive everyday. Latin America countrys do not take care of their citizens like the way this great country does. Check the facts about crimes involving caucasian, you will be surprise. But you are caucasian right? Isn't racism most common in caucasians? Isn't racisim a moral defect?
5-11-2010 @ 1:38AM
Diana said...I TOTALLY THINK THAT PEOPLE ARE BORN GOOD OR BAD. I BELIEVE IN IT TOTALLY. WATCH THE MOVIE "THE BAD SEED." I HAVE SEEN IT IN TRUE LIFE. I HAVE WORKED IN DAYCARES ETC.... BUT I DO THINK THAT SOMETIMES CIRCUMSTANCE CAN TURN IT AROUND, FOR BETTER OR WORSE. YOU HAVE TO TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION TOO. BELIEVE IT. IT DOES HAPPEN. THAT'S WHEN YOU HOPE KARMA IS REAL....LOL.
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5-13-2010 @ 10:09PM
MITCH said...WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP!
There are people who have horrible lives and get into all kinds of trouble and seem like really bad people.
But then thing change and they are given a chance and they all of a sudden are good people!
DUH!!!
Reply
5-11-2010 @ 3:03AM
Ashley said...OK...The babies reaching for the "good guy"...it's because they were scared or intimidated by the mean one. Those are MY observations...How bout that!
Reply
5-11-2010 @ 5:07AM
drantabear said...African people often have a stronger sense of kinship with each other,even when two strangers met. It's why they frequently refer to each other as 'brothers",something many whites still do not get or develop even into old age. To whites its simply: 'man' or "dude',as much empathy as a one rock to another.I doubt white kids have a one-up on the soul man. I bet the kid was hitting a white puppet.
Reply
5-13-2010 @ 2:48PM
Rich said...Okay. What were the intentions of the toy climbing up the hill? Maybe it was up to no good. Maybe the toy trying to prevent the climb was the "good" guy trying to stop the toy with bad intentions... or maybe the other one was...
The point is Bloom is assuming an awful lot, e.g., that such simplistic scenarios and a baby's imagination and interpretation and reactions are really about morality and not something else altogether, that his (Bloom's) own sense of what should be interpreted as a moral reaction isn't skewed or biased, etc.
Maybe a sense of morality is in the genes and maybe it's not, but such anecdotal evidence, as always, is neither convincing nor scientific...
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