Judges and Santa aren’t the only ones who are busy determining who is naughty and who is nice. New research from a team at Yale suggests that babies as young as six months old can assess the actions and intentions of people around them. They determine who is helpful, who is neutral, and who is bad, and they respond to the people accordingly. Simply put, these babies show a clear preference for people they assess as being “good” over those they determine to be “bad.”

What the researchers did.
J. Kiley Hamlin, Karen Wynn and Paul Bloom conducted a series of experiments with six- and ten-month-old infants. Their first experiment showed a figure known as the “climber,” which was made of wood with large eyes glued on it. The climber was initially at rest at the foot of a hill. Infants were shown the figure trying to climb the hill three times. On the third attempt, the climber was either aided by a helper who pushed from behind or thwarted by a hinderer who pushed it down. The scenes were shown repeatedly, alternating until the infants demonstrated that they had processed the information (determined according to accepted “looking time” criterion).

Because the researchers wanted to know whether what the infants had seen would affect their attitude towards the helper and the hinderer, they showed the infants both figures and encouraged them to choose one. A whopping 14 of 16 ten month olds and 12 of 12 six month olds reached for the helper. The children demonstrated a clear preference for the helpful character!

Researchers also wondered if the infants had formed an idea about what the climber might “think” about these two parties. So, they showed the infants new scenes, in which the climber alternately approached the helper and the hinderer. The six-month-olds looked at both events equally, but the ten-month-olds indicated that they felt surprised when the climber approached the party who hindered it. This suggests that babies are able to form their own assessments of people before they develop expectations for others’ assessments.

The second experiment sought to establish that the infants’ responses were not simply the result of non-social factors, such as a preference for upward rather than downward motion. The infants were shown new scenes, in which the characters known in experiment 1 as the helper and hinderer pushed an inanimate, faceless object up and down a hill. Then, they were asked to choose one of the two characters. If it were true that their preferences were based on direction rather than intention, the results should have favored the pushing-up character here. But that wasn’t the case. Eight of 16 ten-month-old infants and 4 of 12 six-month-old infants chose the pusher-up.

Because the researchers wondered if the infants were (1) evaluating the helper positively, (2) evaluating the hinderer negatively, or (3) both, they developed a third experiment. New groups of six- and ten-month-old infants were shown either a scene involving the climber, helper, and a “neutral” party who moved up the hill but did not interact with the climber or a scene involving the climber, hinderer, and a “neutral” party who moved down the hill but did not interact with the climber. Children were then asked to choose between the helper and the neutral party or the hinderer and the neutral party.

In this case, infants showed a strong preference for the helper (7 of 8 ten-month-olds infants and 7 of 8 six-month-old infants) over the neutral party and a strong preference for the neutral party (7 of 8 ten-month-old infants and 7 of 8 six-month-old infants) over the hinderer. This shows that their judgment is both positive and negative; they are both drawn to helpful parties and repelled by hindering ones.

What does it mean?
First, these experiments show that even young babies can evaluate individuals based on their social interactions. Second, they show that babies like parties who help and dislike parties who hinder, even when they are uninvolved witnesses to the interactions. This may form the basis of babies’ understanding of right and wrong.

It seems there’s a whole lot more going on in our babies’ heads than we might readily expect. Next time someone tells you “your baby can’t possibly understand that,” you’ll have good reason to believe otherwise!