If you’ve been listening to The Psychology World Podcast for a while then you might have noticed that from time to time I report on research concerning the morality of infants. I’ve always found it is interesting and I like how research is starting to recognise that infants can be naturally moral. And yet this challenges a lot of traditional theories that have a lot of research support. Resulting in a rather large paradox for researchers. In this developmental psychology episode, you’ll learn are infants moral by learning about a range of social and developmental factors that help to make infants moral (and immoral too). If you like learning about morality, prosocial behaviour and child psychology then you’ll enjoy today’s episode.
This podcast episode has been sponsored by Developmental Psychology: A Guide To Developmental and Child Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Are Infants Moral?
When it comes to the topic of morality in children and more specifically infants, there are generally two schools of thought. Firstly, you have the more traditional school of thought that has a lot of research support and this is the idea that children learn their morality through their parents. There are a lot of references in the Reference section at the bottom of the podcast episode, but one piece of evidence for this theory is how morality varies from culture to culture. This supports the social explanation of morality, because if morality was innate then morality wouldn’t vary as much from culture to culture because our sense of morality would have evolved as part of our species.
Then another school of thought that has a growing body of evidence comes from researchers like Yale Professor Karen Wyn. These researchers propose morality begins in infancy and this runs against the idea that morality is taught through parents.
How can there be so much evidence for our theories?
Could it be because they are both right?
There are a few different reasons about why Wyn and her critics are both right about morality and how it develops. Firstly, they’re both right because the definition of morality varies slightly from study to study as does the level or measures of behaviour each study looks at. Since Wyn’s research refers to an infant’s innate propensity to be prosocial, whilst her critics focus on social conventions that differ from place to place.
I know this little example is silly in the grand scheme of things, but it is very apt here. In the UK, it isn’t considered moral or immoral to put salt and pepper on your food, but in Portugal, it is considered rude and by extension, immoral to put extra salt and pepper on your food. Since you are implying the chef hasn’t seasoned their food right.
As a result, it is possible that morality is an innate human trait that is universal in the human species but it is implemented and expressed differently between cultures and even from person to person. We only need to think about the different behaviours people think are moral within a single country or town, let alone an entire species.
What Did Wyn’s Research Show?
In addition, Wyn found through her series of experiments that infants look longer at helping puppets than puppets that stopped another puppet from opening a box. As well as different variations of the experiment found the exact same thing, so this suggests infants prefer people who help others compared to people who made things more difficult for other people.
Of course, this research is only suggestive at this point in time, but what makes it interesting is that Wyn’s study is part of a growing body of research making the same point. Infants do offer help, they do comfort people in distress and they prefer people who do the same.
Personally, I think this is actually a rather lovely and even heartwarming finding. Especially, because people like me who focus so much on clinical psychology, we read and focus on mental health conditions, mental health difficulties and the “darker” side of human behaviour from time to time. Therefore, this study is a pleasant reminder about the lighter side of human behaviour and how great psychology research can be.
Can These Prosocial Tendencies Be Overwritten?
Unfortunately, as you can probably guess, the innate sense of morality in an infant doesn’t stay with an infant unless a parent builds on these propensities. Yet this isn’t always just down to the parent, because these prosocial propensities can be overridden by peers and the larger culture as a whole if they convey very different values.
What Did Wyn Find Out About Prejudice?
An interesting finding of Wyn’s study is that she found another trait that impacted the infant’s judgements and this certainly isn’t positive if you really think about it. So Wyn found that infants preferred the puppets who liked the same food as the infant. On the surface, this is a very normal finding that I wouldn’t have cared less about, but Wyn makes a very interesting point that I can definitely understand.
She implied that this could be the root adult of prejudice because infants show we might prefer people who are like us and dislike people who are not like us. Remember, the babies also liked the puppets that were like them in terms of they shared similar interests in food, and at first, I thought this sounded like a silly example. But how many conversations as adults have all of us started and bonded over because of food?
A lot, so I think this food preference does hold ecological validity because it continues into adulthood. It was only a few days ago that me and a friend were having a conversation about nachos, and neither one of us are children.
Wyn talks about this finding more with the following quote:
"Babies and infants were far more likely to approve of the similar puppets being helped, while having the same positive reaction when the puppets that chose different foods were hindered," Wynn said. "This reaction seems to suggest the roots of the adult impulses toward xenophobia, prejudice and war."
I think this is a very interesting point that will hopefully be researched more in the future.
Developmental Psychology Conclusion
Overall, at the end of this podcast episode, we know that infants have an innate sense of morality and what is morally right and wrong. Yet infants have a sense of “us and them” as well and this is important to realise when it comes to morality, because morality does account for in-group cohesion and this is something I’ll talk more about in the future. And yet, morality and “us and them” thinking accounts for the violence that is found in religion as well according to the Philosopher John Teehan.
Therefore, I think the biggest takeaway from today’s episode is to foster that sense of love, compassion and morality in our infants. We need to raise them to be moral, be kind and to be compassionate to other people, because that will help to make the world a better and safer place for everyone.
And isn’t that the world we want to live in?
If you want to learn more, please check out:
Moral Psychology: An Introduction To The Social Psychology, Biological Psychology and Applied Psychology of Morality. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Have a great day.
Social Psychology References
Bloom, P. (2010). The moral life of babies. New York Times Magazine, 3, MM44.
Bloom, P., & Wynn, K. (2016). What develops in moral development. Core knowledge and conceptual change, 347-364.
Dahl, A. (2014). Definitions and Developmental Processes in Research on Infant MoralityCommentary on Tafreshi, Thompson, and Racine. Human Development, 57(4), 241-249.
Hamlin, J. K. (2015). Does the infant possess a moral concept?.
Hamlin, J. K., & Wynn, K. (2011). Young infants prefer prosocial to antisocial others. Cognitive development, 26(1), 30-39.
Hamlin, J. K., Mahajan, N., Liberman, Z., & Wynn, K. (2013). Not like me= bad: Infants prefer those who harm dissimilar others. Psychological science, 24(4), 589-594.
Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., Bloom, P., & Mahajan, N. (2011). How infants and toddlers react to antisocial others. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 108(50), 19931-19936.
Marshall, J., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2020). Do children and adults take social relationship into account when evaluating people’s actions?. Child Development, 91(5), e1082-e1100.
Sheskin, M., Bloom, P., & Wynn, K. (2014). Anti-equality: Social comparison in young children. Cognition, 130(2), 152-156.
Whiteley, C. (2022) Psychology of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Friendships, Romantic Relationships and More. CGD Publishing. England.
Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2014). The moral baby. In M. Killen & J. G. Smetana (Eds.), Handbook of moral development (2nd ed., pp. 435–453). Psychology Press.
Wynn, K., Bloom, P., Jordan, A., Marshall, J., & Sheskin, M. (2018). Not noble savages after all: Limits to early altruism. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(1), 3-8.
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