Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Jason Stanley's avatar
  2. Daniel Greco's avatar
  3. Nobody's avatar
  4. Roger of Invisible America's avatar
  5. Santa Monica's avatar
  6. Optimistic about LLM's avatar
  7. Ben M-Y's avatar

Do babies have an innate moral sense?

Brian Leiter

There must be more to the "science" than what is described here:

They begin with a puppet show. In this show, a gray cat is seen trying to open a big plastic box. The cat tries repeatedly, but he just can't open the lid all the way. A bunny in a green T-shirt comes along and helps open the box. Then the scenario is repeated, but this time a bunny in an orange T-shirt comes along and slams the box shut before running away. The green bunny is nice and helpful. The orange bunny is mean and unhelpful.

The baby is then presented with the two bunnies from the show. A staff member who doesn't know which bunny was mean and which bunny was nice will offer both bunnies at the same time to the baby. The baby's mother, who is usually present during the study, closes her eyes so as not to influence the baby in any way.

Which bunny do the babies choose? More than 80% of the babies in the study showed their preference for the good bunny, either by reaching for the good bunny or staring at it. And with 3-month-olds, that number goes higher, to 87%.

As described, the result is obviously equally compatible with the hypothesis that babies are born with an innate sense of self-interest.  So what's the real story here?  Additional links welcome.  (Thanks to Mark Couch for the pointer.)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

17 responses to “Do babies have an innate moral sense?”

  1. Aaron Garrett

    How can you doubt that's what it shows? "The team at the Baby Lab has been very careful in their studies to change the puppets, shirt colors and placement of the animals before presenting them to various babies, and they feel confident their published research is sound." It's clear — we have an innate moral sense.

    Reply
  2. Jean-Paul

    There's more to the studies than was mentioned here. Babies in other experiments prefer bunnies who punish wrongdoers. They prefer bunnies who like the same kind of snack that they do. And they prefer bunnies who punish those who prefer the 'wrong' cereal.



    Reply
  3. Jonathan Zaikowski

    Breaking news: humans don't want to be surrounded by jerks.

    Who knew?

    Reply
  4. Anne Jacobson

    It's a bit more than that: they decide who's a jerk on the basis of how another is treated, and they do it very early on.

    What strikes me as genuinely amazing is that 3 months old babies apparently can see puppets as actors with goals. One has to wonder if there isn't some sort of proto concept operating, and whether that might mean the "moral" interpretation really needs more justification than it now has.

    Reply
  5. John

    Smithsonian Magazine has a longer article on the subject…

    http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-babies-born-good-165443013/?all

    Reply
  6. Mark

    It is pretty clear that the data show that babies are vindictive S.O.B.s.

    Reply
  7. Dustin Locke

    The hidden premise seems to be some (crude) form of meta-ethical non-cognitivism, according to which to think that helping behavior is morally correct just is to have a preference for those who help.

    Reply
  8. Jonathan Zaikowski

    I fully agree it's interesting to see this sort of preference early on, especially with behavior towards others as the key factor. My comment was only directed at the idea that this shows some sort of "moral instinct" to validate or condemn behavior, and not just avoiding a potential threat.

    Reply
  9. Michael B

    Does anyone have a link to the study/studies in question? I didn't see one on the article linked and it's lazy to question the methodology without checking the original paper. (New year's res: be less lazy.)

    Thanks in advance.

    Reply
  10. Aaron Maltais

    Anne, the babies are making their choice based on seeing some other agent being mistreated, but I do not see why it follows, as seems to be presumed by the study, that the babies are demonstrating empathy for others and reacting in terms of judgements about what kind of treatment any agent is owed. The same choice pattern would be consistent with an innate drive for self preservation or/and projecting themselves into the role of protagonist in the puppet show.

    Reply
  11. Anne Jacobson

    Jonathan, that would mean they are avoiding things that hurt others things. If I'm remembering correctly, they said some time ago at a SPP meeting that they were going to address that issue, but I have't follow this up.

    I'd say that I think your interpretation of the babies behavior is more plausible, but I think a lesson from cognitive neuroscience is that philosophical hunches can be quite wrong. For example, we might find that there's a brain area particularly involved in processing norm violations and that this is activated prenatally. (Think judgmental fetuses.) I think we'd still have a question about whether the babies have full fledged norms, but we may want to attribute to them a distinction that coincides with a distinction between breaking norms and not.

    Reply
  12. Anne Jacobson

    Aaron, in fact, I haven't look carefully at the current versions, but perhaps that's explaining in part why they describe the babies in terms that seem to imply they see puppets as agents with goals. This might be something like a 'proto' concept.

    That's not to say they are justified; one would want to ask them. I said above I understood the researchers to say some time ago that they would look at this issue more.

    Reply
  13. Eddy Nahmias

    The studies are more complex and controlled than the CNN report portrays, though I have not read the most recent journal articles on this work. A nice overview of it in 2010 is Paul Bloom's article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

    Reply
  14. Matt Welch

    Eddy is right, CNN did not do Paul Bloom's work justice. Here is a list of his latest articles with links: http://www.yale.edu/minddevlab/publications.html#journalarticles

    Reply
  15. Richard Galvin

    I am team-teaching a course with a member of our political science department, ostensibly on applied ethics but which includes much more, and among the topics we address is Bloom's research (we also address Pinker's and Haidt's stuff). It is very unfortunate that some take Bloom's (and others') work as evidence that even babies have a moral SENSE. To characterize it as such is misleading, perhaps even a distortion, and is certainly not entailed by the evidence. It doesn't establish that there is a moral SENSE, on a par with other senses such as taste, sight, etc., nor does it support what "moral sense" theorists such as Hutchison have argued for. What it does seem to suggest is that even young babies have a moral sensibility, in the sense that they seem to be able to apply what we might identify as moral concepts or categories to their experience, and perhaps even to behave in ways that indicate responsiveness to the application of these concepts to what they have experienced. That the babies are so young suggests that their responses are not learned, hence the inference to such responsiveness being in some sense part of the psychological/motivational hand that we are dealt. What it DOES appear to show is that the conception of morality as a "veneer" that that socialization (or whatever) imposes upon us restrains the vicious "beasts" that we all would be if left unrestrained, is up against it. But, perhaps most importantly, all readers of this blog should know that theory is underdetermined by the data. So a "moral sense"–no way.

    Reply
  16. Josh May

    In addition to the comments by Jean-Paul, Anne, and Eddy, I think it's important to note that the inference to innate moral capacities isn't necessarily drawn solely from such studies. One of the main proponents, Paul Bloom, has recently written a book (Just Babies) that draws on a great deal of research, not just from this sort of study or even just developmental psychology. Compare Haidt: he doesn't draw conclusions about innate moral foundations from just his, say, moral dumbfounding studies. (That's not to defend their arguments, but rather to more charitably represent them.)

    Reply
  17. Ruth

    1. I don't like the dangerous bunny.
    2. I don't like the loud/dangerous bunny.
    3. I don't like the bunny that runs away.
    4. I am interested in the quieter bunny.
    5. I am interested in the bunny that helps/is not dangerous.
    6. I am interested in the bunny that sticks around.

    There could be a lot of other factors, including the orientation of each bunny, how quickly each bunny moves, where each bunny appears to be looking, etc.
    I'm not seeing any norms here, or even any good/bad judgments; just preferences. And of course, others have pointed out that the preferences of children in this domain are a bit more complicated than this one experiment would suggest.

    I think this is more interesting: what do kids DO when given the opportunity to help, hinder, or do nothing? Typical kids help!

    http://www.eva.mpg.de/psycho/videos/children_cabinet.mpg

    Even here, you might wonder if the child is just bothered by the clumsy lunkhead who can't open the door and is thereby creating a boring situation in the research lab room. The sooner that researcher moves along with whatever he's doing, the sooner I can get back to Elmo! I myself often help people solely because their ineptitude is holding up the line and I want it to move. (Sometimes I help for other reasons also, but you get the point.)

    Also, it's fun to do stuff. Standing around is boring.

    Reply

Designed with WordPress