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Are babies born good or evil?
By, John Elder

As much as a crying, red-faced baby can seem like a monster, as parents refer to the baby as “the little devil!”, is this actually the case?

Experiments with babies and toddlers in recent years suggest that we are born with a tendency to be generous and kind. Our moral compass, deep down, points to the good path.

In a study by scientist Paul Bloom, at the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University, one-year-olds were individually treated to a puppet show. One of the puppets was sharing a ball with two others, one of which was the “good” puppet, and handed it back; the other was the “bad” puppet, and kept stealing and running off with the ball.

At the end of the show, the puppets were taken from the stage, and put in front of the baby, with each puppet given a small pile of treats. The baby was asked to punish one of the puppets by taking away a treat. The naughty puppet was consistently punished.

Of course, by age one, babies have already been exposed to some type of approval from their respective families. One-year-olds are to an extent socialized – and have been made aware of punishment. This compromises Professor Bloom’s argument that the baby’s behavior is naturally occurring rather than learned.

Bloom published his research about two years ago – and it confirmed what other behavioral psychologists had found in experiments with adults. But the doubters persisted, calling for hard science.

Since then, research into the neuroscience of morality – using a combination of social experiments, brain scanning and manipulation –has begun to confirm what the psychologists have been suggesting, that we are essentially good eggs when hatched into the world.

The bottom line is, man’s first instinct when confronted with a moral dilemma is to behave generously or cooperatively.

“The more we tend to vicariously experience the states of others, the more we appear to be inclined to treat them as we would ourselves,” Christov-Moore said, in a university prepared statement.