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Psychologist Karen Wynn runs an experiment to find out whether babies are born with a sense of morality.

To test this, a psychologist puts on a two-act puppet show for infants.

Are Babies Capable of Making Moral Judgements?

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Psychologist Karen Wynn runs an experiment to find out whether babies are born with a sense of morality.

To test this, a psychologist puts on a two-act puppet show for infants.

Body & Brain

Are Babies Capable of Making Moral Judgements?Published: November 22, 2019Karen Wynn: I was interested in the fundamental structures of the human mind. What do we bring with us when we come into the world, how do we understand the world?Assistant: Up goes the curtain!Narrator: To figure that out, she puts on a two-act puppet show for babies.Wynn: So, this duck is looking inside this box, sees a nice toy inside of it, and is trying to open the box to get the toy, but is not being successful opening it. And this green shirted puppy very nicely helps the duck so it can get its toy. That’s our nice puppet.Narrator: In Act Two, this nice puppy takes center stage.Wynn: And now, our nice puppy is playing with this ball and he very nicely rolls it over to the blue shirted puppet and the blue shirted puppet rolls it nicely back to him. That was a nice interaction. Now this time he’s going to invite the other kitty to play with him. Will you roll it back to me? No. He steals the ball. What a jerk.Assistant: Hi.Narrator: Next the babies are given a choice.Assistant: Which one do you like?Narrator: Do they prefer the kitty who was nice to the nice puppy, or mean to the nice puppy?Wynn: If you give them the choice, babies very robustly choose the nice one.Assistant: Awesome job.Wynn: Even a three-month-old can look at an interaction between two strangers and decide, “Oh, that’s a good interaction, that’s a nice human being.” Or, “That was a bad interaction, that’s a jerk. I don’t like that jerk.”Assistant: Do you want to just show dad where to sit?Narrator: But that’s just the half of it. Watch what happens when Wynn flips the script and babies see a mean version of the same play.Assistant: Up goes the curtain!Wynn: This time, this mean puppy comes along and slams the box lid shut. He’s not nice at all.Narrator: This time, the mean puppy is the star of Act Two. Just like his nice counterpart, he gets treated nicely by the blue kitty and then meanly by the orange kitty.Assistant #2: Do you see these?Narrator: Will the babies still prefer the nice kitty?Assistant #2: Do you see this one? Which one do you like?Narrator: No. Now they consistently pick the mean one.Assistant #3: Which one do you like?Narrator: Turns out that even at this age, babies have the capacity to make simple moral judgments.Assistant #4: Okay. Oh, good job.Wynn: It’s like, “You’re not deserving of having a friend play a nice game with you. You treated someone else badly, you should be treated badly in return.” So, that tells us that well before their first birthday, babies are already developing notions of just deserts. That is morality.

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Are Babies Capable of Making Moral Judgements?

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