Evidence ID: PSY-EV01

Evidence: Innate Sense of Morality

Summary: There is newfound evidence that we are born with an innate sense of morality. Researcher from The Baby Lab at Yale University found that infants are able to discern between good and bad at an early age. Their claim is that human beings have gained this moral predisposition through the process of natural selection aided by the reinforcement of proper moral conduct.

Description: How do we discern between good and bad, right and wrong? Is it something we learn from our parents? Or, is it something we are born with? These questions are being explored by an emerging field of psychology concerned with the science of morality.

Philosophers and psychologists have long believed that babies are born as moral blank slates, and that it is the role of parents and society to teach babies the difference between right and wrong; good and bad; mean and nice. But a growing number of psychologists now believe that human beings are born with an innate sense of morality [REF-EDG01].

"Evidence suggests we’re all born with some innate sense of morality and fairness, which makes us sensitive to the distress of others." David Pizarro (Psychologist, Cornell University) USA Today, 12-26-2017

"Babies are predisposed to interact with good people." [REF-CNN01] Karen Wynn (Head of the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University)

"There is a universal core that all humans share. These are seeds for our understanding of justice, our understanding of right and wrong. They are part of our biological nature." [REF-CNN02] [REF-BLM01] Paul Bloom, CNN 60 Minutes 2012 (Professor of Psychology, Yale University)

These research findings strongly suggest that human beings are not born with minds that are moral blank slates, but rather minds that are predisposed to make cognitively rational and moral decisions.

Perhaps the most well-known research on the origin of morality is conducted by The Baby Lab headed by Dr. Karen Wynn [REF-BAB01] [REF-BAB02] [REF-CNN01]. Wynn and her team developed the Puppet Show to assess the capacity of infants to make morally sound choices. Because infants have not yet developed cognitive abilities to make complex rational decisions, they make the best subjects with which to measure the innateness of morality.

Their findings indicate that infants from the age of 3 months to 24 months select the good puppet 80% of the time. Moreover, infants 3 months old select the good puppet 87% of the time. From their research, it appears that there is a predisposed moral agency at work, not random selection.

According to Paul Bloom, an infant's ability to make good decisions diminishes over time. He attributes this to an infant's need to compromise.

"This innate sense of justice is tragically limited. Although babies are born with an innate sense of morality, they are also born with flaws." [REF-BLM01]

This is evidenced by the fact that 3-month-old infants select the good puppet 87% of the time, whereas older infants select the good puppet only 80% of the time. For older infants who possess greater cognitive abilities, they have learned the art of compromise.

Universally, these researchers attribute this moral predisposition to making good choices to natural selection. Their claim is that the process of natural selection produces in us a moral DNA. This moral DNA codifies patterns of cognition that are refined and reinforced from one generation to the next.

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