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Babies can tell good people from bad

Babies as young as six months can distinguish between good and bad people, according to a study in which babies observed characters being helpful or unhelpful.

Scientists had thought that social judgments developed with language at about 18 months to two years old.

But the results suggest the ability to make moral judgments has innate foundations and is not just learned from parents.

“Here we have one component of what a sophisticated system of moral judgment requires,” said Professor Karen Wynn, a psychologist at Yale University in Connecticut, part of the team which carried out the study.

The team studied the reactions of six and 10-month-old babies to scenarios involving a climber trying to scale a hill. The character — a circular blob with eyes — was helped or hindered by two different shaped blobs.

The triangle helped push the climber up while an unhelpful square blocked the climber’s ascent.

The babies were offered the choice of holding the triangle or the square. Fourteen of the 16 10-month-olds and all 12 of the six-month-olds chose the triangle. The research is reported in the journal Nature.

Prof. Wynn said an innate sense of who plays by the social rules and who does not would be a great evolutionary advantage and important for the development of human sociality. But it was surprising that such young babies could make those judgments. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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