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Stahl: It's a question people have asked for as long
as there have been people: Are human beings inherently good?
Are we born with a sense of morality, or do
we arrive blank slates, waiting for the world to teach
us right from wrong? Or could it be worse-- do
we start out nasty, selfish devils who need our parents,
teachers, and religions to whip us into shape? The only
way to know for sure, of course, is to ask
a baby. But until recently, it's been hard to persuade
them to open up and share their secrets. Enter the
baby lab. This is the creature at the center of
the greatest philosophical, moral and religious debates about the nature
of man: The human baby. They don't do much-- can't
talk, can't write, can't expound at length about their moral
philosophies. But does that mean they don't have one? The
philosopher rousseau considered babies "perfect idiots, knowing nothing," and yale
psychologist karen wynn, director of the infant cognition center here,
the baby lab, says for most of its history, her
field agreed. Didn't we just think that these creatures at
three months and even six months were basically just little
blobs? Wynn: Oh, sure. I mean, if you look at
them, they... Stahl: Yeah. Wynn: ...They kind of look like
little... I mean, cute little blobs. But they can't do
all the things that a... An older child can. They
can't even do the things that a dog or a
pigeon or a rat can. Stahl: No pulling levers for
treats or running mazes for these study subjects. But they
can watch puppet shows, Wynn: Up goes the curtain! Stahl:
And wynn is part of a new wave of researchers
who have discovered seemingly simple ways to probe what's really
going on in those adorable little heads. Wynn: Up goes
the curtain! Stahl: We watched as wynn and her team
asked a question that, 20 years ago, might have gotten
her laughed out of her field-- does wesley here, at
the ripe old age of five months, know the difference
between right and wrong? Wesley watches as the puppet in
the center struggles to open up a box with a
toy inside. The puppy in the yellow shirt comes over
and lends a hand. Then the scene repeats itself, but
this time, the puppy in the blue shirt comes and
slams the box shut. Nice behavior... Mean behavior... At least
to our eyes. But is that how a five-month-old sees
it, and does he have a preference? Wesley, do you
remember these guys from the show? Stahl: To find out,
a researcher who doesn't know which puppet was nice and
which was mean offers wesley a choice. Who do you
like? Stahl: He can't answer, but he can reach. That
one? Stahl: Wesley chose the good guy, and he wasn't
alone. That one! Stahl: More than three quarters of the
babies tested reached for the nice puppet. That one! Stahl:
Wynn tried it out on even younger babies-- three- month-olds,
who can't control their arms enough to reach. But they
can vote with their eyes, since research has shown that
even very young babies look longer at things they like.
Which one do you like? Stahl: Daisy here looked at
the mean puppet for five seconds, then switched to the
nice one for 33. Wynn: Babies, even at three months,
looked towards the nice character and looked hardly at all--
much, much, much shorter time-- towards the unhelpful character. Stahl:
So basically, as young as three months old, we human
beings show a preference for nice people over mean people.
Wynn: Study after study after study, the results are always
consistently babies feeling positively towards helpful individuals in the world.
And disapproving, disliking, maybe condemning individuals who are antisocial towards
others. Stahl: It's astonishing. Wynn and her team first published
their findings about baby morality in the journal "nature" in
2007, and they've continued to publish follow-up studies in other
peer-reviewed journals ever since; for instance, on this experiment. They
showed babies like james here a puppet behaving badly. Instead
of rolling the ball back to the puppet in the
middle, this green-shirted bunny keeps the other puppet's ball and
runs away. Then, james is shown a second show. This
time, the bunny, who he just saw steal the ball,
tries to open up the box to get the toy.
Will james still prefer the puppet who helps out, or
will he now prefer the one who slams the box
shut? Who do you like? Stahl: He chose the one
who slammed it shut, as did 81% of babies tested.
The study's conclusion-- babies seem to view the ball thief
as deserving punishment. So, do you think that babies, therefore,
are born with an innate sense of justice? Wynn: At
a very elemental level, I think so. Paul Bloom: We
think we see here the foundations for morality. Stahl: Paul
bloom is also a professor of psychology at yale, with
his own lab. He's collaborated with wynn on many of
her baby studies, anhe also happens to be her husband.
Bloom: I feel we're making discoveries. I feel like we're...
We're discovering that what seems to be one way really
isn't. What seems to be an ignorant and unknowing baby
is actually a creature with this alarming sophistication, this subtle
knowledge. Stahl: And he says discovering this in babies who
can't walk, talk or even crawl yet suggests it has
to come built in. So, remember b.F. Skinner, who said
that we had to teach our children everything through conditioning.
So, does this just wipe him off the map? Bloom:
What we're finding in the baby lab is that there's
more to it than that, that there's a universal moral
core that all humans share. The seeds of our understanding
of justice, our understanding of right and wrong, are part
of our biological nature. Stahl: Wait a minute-- if babies
are born with a basic sense of right and wrong,
a universal moral core, where does all the evil in
the world come from? Is that all learned? Well, maybe
not. Take a look at this new series of discoveries
in the yale baby lab. Would you like a snack?
Stahl: In offering babies this seemingly small, innocuous choice, graham
crackers or cheerios, wynn is probing something big-- the origins
of bias, the tendency to prefer others who are similar
to ourselves. Wynn: Adults will like others who share even
really absolutely trivial similarities with them. Stahl: So will nate,
who chose cheerios over graham crackers, prefer this orange cat
who also likes cheerios over the grey cat who likes
graham crackers instead? Which one do you like? Apparently so.
But if babies have positive feelings for the similar puppet,
do they actually have negative feelings for the one who's
different? To find out, wynn showed babies the grey cat,
the one who liked the opposite food, struggling to open
up the box to get a toy. Will gregory want
to see the graham cracker-eater treated well? Or does he
want him treated badly? Which one do you like? That
one. Okay! Stahl: Gregory seemed to want the different puppet
treated badly. That is amazing. So he went with his
bias in a way. And so did nate and 87%
of the other babies tested. From this, wynn concludes that
infants prefer those who harm others who are unlike them.
Bloom: What could be more arbitrary than whether you like
graham crackers or cheerios? Stahl: Nothing. Bloom: Nothing. But it
matters. It matters to the young baby. We are predisposed
to break the world up into different human groups based
on the most subtle and seemingly irrelevant cues. And that,
to some extent, is the dark side of morality. Stahl:
We want the other to be punished? Wynn: In our
studies, babies seem as if they do want the other
to be punished. Stahl: We used to think that we're
taught to hate. I think there was a song like
that. This is suggesting that we're not taught to hate,
we're born to hate. Wynn: I think that we are
built to, you know, at the drop of a hat,
create "us and them." Bloom: And that... And that's why
we're not that moral. We have an initial moral sense
that is, in some ways, very impressive, and in some
ways, really depressing; that we see some of the worst
biases in adults reflected in the minds and in the
behaviors of young babies. Stahl: But bloom says understanding our
earliest instincts can help. Bloom: If you want to eradicate
racism, for instance, you reallyre going to want to know
to what extent are babies little bigots? To what extent
is racism a natural part of humanity? Stahl: Sounds to
me like the experiment show they are little bigots. Bloom:
I think, to some extent, a bias to favor the
self-- where the self could be people who look like
me, people who act like me, people who have the
same taste as me-- is a very strong human bias.
It is what one would expect from a creature like
us who evolved from natural selection, but it has terrible
consequences. Stahl: He says it makes sense that evolution would
predispose us to be wary of "the other" for survival,
and so we need society and parental nurturing to intervene.
He showed us one last series of experiments being done
in his lab not with babies, but with older children
of different ages. Blue. Stahl: The kids get to decide
how many tokens they'll get versus how many will go
to another child they're told will come in later. They're
told the tokens can be traded in for prizes. So
you can say "green," and if you say "green," then
you get this one and the other girl doesn't get
any. Or you can say "blue," and if you say
"blue," then you get these two and the other girl
gets these two. So green or... Green! Stahl: The youngest
kids in the study will routinely choose to get fewer
prizes for themselves... Green. Stahl: ...Just to get more than
the other kid... I'll pick green. Stahl: ...In some cases,
a lot more. (Laughs) Bloom: The youngest children in the
studies are obsessed with social comparison. So you get these
seven. She doesn't get any. Yay! Bloom: They don't care
about fairness. What they want is they want relatively more.
Stahl: But a funny thing happens as kids get older.
Around age eight, they start choosing the equal, fair option
more and more. Green. Stahl: And by nine or ten,
we saw kids doing something really crazy... Green. Stahl: ...Deliberately
giving the other kid more. Green or blue? Green. Stahl:
They become generous. Chalk one up to society. They've already
been educated? Bloom: They've been educated, they've been inculturated, they...
They have their heads stuffed full of the virtues that
we might want to have their heads stuffed with. Culture
and education. Stahl: So we can learn to temper some
of those nasty tendencies we're wired for-- the selfishness, the
bias-- but he says the instinct is still there. Bloom:
When we have these findings with the kids, the kids
who choose this and not this, the kids in the
baby studies who favor the one who is similar to
them, the same taste and everything, none of this goes
away. I think, as adults, we can always see these
and kind of nod. Stahl: Yeah. It's still in us.
We're fighting it. Bloom: And the truth is, when... When
we're under pressure, when life is difficult, we regress to
our younger selves, and all of this elaborate stuff we
have on top disappears. Stahl: But, of course, adversity can
bring out the best in us, too-- heroism, selfless sacrifice
for strangers-- all of which may have its roots right
here. Bloom: Great kindness, great altruism, a magnificent sense of
impartial justice have their seeds in the baby's mind. Both
aspects of us, the good and the bad, are the
product, i think, of biological evolution. Stahl: So it seems
we're left where we all began-- with a mix of
altruism, selfishness, justice, bigotry, kindness-- a lot more than any
of us expected to discover in a blob. Well, I
end my conversation with you with far more respect for
babies. Who knew?