A new study out of the University of British Columbia has found evidence suggesting the roots of morality are "present from birth."Researchers admitted that while this doesn't "settle the debate" over whether morality is innate or learned, it "certainly pushes the needle toward the idea that some parts of our moral sense are built in."The experiments involved showing 90 newborns sets of simple animated videos of balls interacting with one another. One would show a ball pushing another up a ramp, symbolizing positive, helpful behaviour, while the other would show the ball being pushed down, symbolizing negative, unhelpful behaviour. Another set showed one ball moving towards the other to "say hello" and another moving away, avoiding its potential friend.Researchers discovered that infants' eyes "lingered longer" on the scenarios showing helpful behaviour.."These babies have almost no experience with the social world, and yet they're already picking up on friendly versus unfriendly interactions, on helping versus hindering," UBC psychology professor and study co-leader Dr. Kiley Hamlin said. "That could be telling us something really important about human nature."She was assisted by Dr. Alessandra Geraci, assistant professor in the department of educational sciences at the University of Catania, Luca Surian from the University of Trento, and Lucia Gabriella Tina from ARNAS Garibaldi Hospital."Five-day-old babies are asleep a lot of the time, and likely haven't observed prosocial or antisocial behaviour," Hamlin added. "Even if they had, their poor distance vision means they probably couldn't process the event unless it happened immediately in front of their face. Yet they still prefer to watch prosocial interactions over antisocial ones. That makes it very unlikely they’ve learned this entirely from experience."She argued that rather than simply "reacting to distinct patterns of motion," babies appeared to be "responding to the social meaning behind those motions."Earlier research has shown that infants as young as six months "prefer helpful characters," but this is the first demonstration of such a phenomenon in days-old babies.
