Babies have inborn sense of justice
PTI | Nov 30, 2011, 07.44AM IST
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WASHINGTON: Babies as young as eight months want to see antisocial individuals punished, a new study has found, suggesting that humans develop a sense of justice at a very tender age. In contrast, younger babies prefer to see individuals being nice to one another - even when that means that someone is nice to a character who deserves a slap on the wrist, found the researchers.
"This study helps to answer questions that have puzzled evolutionary psychologists for decades," lead researcher Kiley Hamlin, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, was quoted as saying by LiveScience. "Namely, how have we survived as intensely social creatures if our sociability makes us vulnerable to being cheated and exploited? These findings suggest that, from as early as eight months, we are watching for people who might put us in danger," Hamlin said.
Hamlin and her team had previously found that babies prefer individuals who do nice things for others . But whether they would always want to see niceness for niceness' sake, or whether mean individuals might be an exception to this rule. So they carried out a series of experiments using puppets to act out scenarios of helping and harming while each of 32 fivemonth-olds and 32 eight-montholds watched separately.
The puppets were first shown struggling to open a box containing a toy, while another either jumped in to help or cruelly slammed the lid shut. Next, the infants watched as the puppet that had helped or hindered played with a ball and dropped it. It was found that five-montholds always preferred the ball-giver, no matter whether the puppet that had dropped the ball had been mean or helpful in the previous scene.
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WASHINGTON: Babies as young as eight months want to see antisocial individuals punished, a new study has found, suggesting that humans develop a sense of justice at a very tender age. In contrast, younger babies prefer to see individuals being nice to one another - even when that means that someone is nice to a character who deserves a slap on the wrist, found the researchers.
"This study helps to answer questions that have puzzled evolutionary psychologists for decades," lead researcher Kiley Hamlin, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, was quoted as saying by LiveScience. "Namely, how have we survived as intensely social creatures if our sociability makes us vulnerable to being cheated and exploited? These findings suggest that, from as early as eight months, we are watching for people who might put us in danger," Hamlin said.
Hamlin and her team had previously found that babies prefer individuals who do nice things for others . But whether they would always want to see niceness for niceness' sake, or whether mean individuals might be an exception to this rule. So they carried out a series of experiments using puppets to act out scenarios of helping and harming while each of 32 fivemonth-olds and 32 eight-montholds watched separately.
The puppets were first shown struggling to open a box containing a toy, while another either jumped in to help or cruelly slammed the lid shut. Next, the infants watched as the puppet that had helped or hindered played with a ball and dropped it. It was found that five-montholds always preferred the ball-giver, no matter whether the puppet that had dropped the ball had been mean or helpful in the previous scene.
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