Born good? Babies help unlock the origins of morality

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