Showing posts with label Infants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Infants. Show all posts

Moral or Amoral – Are We Born One Or The Other?


Moral or amoral – are we born one or the other? This seems a strange question at first sight, but maybe people have been assuming one or the other for years. Ask a psychologist and they will rush off and design an experiment and check out a handy group of infants who are just a few months old.

Scarf et al from U Otago have carried out some experiments to check if the results of Hamlin et al were correct (1, 2). The earlier work with very young infants concluded that a moral compass was built in as a biological adaption. The infants watched toys climbing a hill and in some cases they bumped into another toy that helped them get to the top. In other events, the colliding toy hindered the climb. The observation was that the infants wanted the helper toy as a playmate.

Scarf et al re-did the experiments with rather more laconic toys (no bouncing with excitement when reaching the summit) and threw into the mix a neutral toy that minded its own business. What was the result this time? The 10-month old infants wanted the neutral toy as a playmate. They didn’t like collisions.

So it seems that there was no moral reasoning involved, but they were averse to confrontational collisions whatever the outcome and were opting for the uncomplicated peaceful life without unnecessary complications.

Interesting how many of us have retained this trait as we grow up as a way of avoiding trouble.  We stay as simple creatures that prefer to leave the wrestling with huge moral choices to characters in the movies.

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0042698
  2. J.K Hamlin, K Wynn, and P. Bloom, Nature, 450, 557, (2007).



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Starting Young


People, in general, tend to be cooperative creatures and that is one of the major reasons for our success in the big scheme of things. The received wisdom is that traits such as fairness, altruism, and empathy make high levels of cooperation possible.

An interesting question is when do these traits become apparent? Do we have to be well into our childhood before we play fair? Well, some researchers have suggested this, but Schmidt and Sommerville have the results of a new study that suggests that this is not the case (1). These workers studied the responses of forty-seven 15-month old girls and boys to two basic situations.

The toddlers watched some videos where two people requested cookies or milk from a third person. In some cases the handouts were equal and in some they were clearly unequal. The young observers stared significantly longer at either the unfair division video picture or the fair division one, indicating their expected result. If an unfair division wasn’t what they expected from an adult, they stared longer – it was in violation of their expectation, VOE.

The next experimental set was designed to test their altruism. After being allowed to play with two toys and showing a preference for one, they were asked by an unfamiliar observer if they could have one. Here we have an interesting result. 32% of the toddlers ignored the request, 37% handed over their least preferred toy, while 32% handed over their preferred toy. These latter toddlers were classified as “altruistic sharers” as opposed to “selfish sharers” (the 37%) or “non-responders”.

Now the analysis becomes more interesting when the VOE preferences are tied in with the sharing behaviors. Our altruistic sharers were very heavily in the group staring in disbelief at the unfair cookie handout, while our selfish sharers were equally heavily glaring at the fair division. The non-responders had VOE preferences split between the two, but they weren’t interested in sharing with strangers anyway.

So what are we going to make of all this? Firstly Schmidt and Sommerville point out that altruism and fairness are already there at 15-months. But wouldn’t it be interesting to fast forward 50 years and see which ones had become lawyers, politicians, or aid workers?

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0023223