New research: Babies under 8 months old have a sense of morality

Using an eye-tracking cognitive model, new Japanese research finds that infants have a sense of morality and a sense of justice to punish bad guys before they can speak.

New research shows that babies already have a sense of 'third-party punishment' before they can talk, which means early babies already have a sense of justice.

In a recent study published in Nature Human Behavior, researchers from Osaka University, in collaboration with Otsuma Women's University, NTT Media Science Laboratory, and the University of Tokyo, tested 120 infants, all under 8 months of age. 

First, they familiarize the infant with a computer system in which animated images are displayed on a screen. Children can control actions on the screen using eye tracking so that looking at an object for a sufficient amount of time leads to destruction of the object. They then showed the children a video in which a character was hurting another, and saw if the children 'punish' the evil character by staring at it.

Lead researcher Yasuhiro Kanakogi, a professor at Osaka University in Japan, said: 'The results were surprising. We found that infants chose to punish the wicked by increasing their gaze towards them.'

From this result, the researchers suggest that infants have a sense of 'third-party punishment of antisocial others' before they can speak. In other words, the child already has a sense of justice. Children see injustice, and even when they themselves are not hurt, they already have a sense of punishment for the bad guys.

Scientists used to think that perceptions of 'third-party punishment of antisocial people' were unique to adults and that regardless of race, they shared common values. similar. However, scientists do not know if this is a moral concept cultivated by people, or inherent in it, nor do they know at what age people have such awareness.

Professor Yasuhiro Kanakogi said: 'Moral sense is very important and mysterious, and it is one of the characteristics that distinguishes humans from other creatures. We wanted to know if a sense of 'third-party punishment' appeared in humans at a very young age, which would help us discover whether a sense of morality is due to a learning process. practice cultivation that form or not.'

The researchers then conducted another experiment to further confirm the results of the first experiment. The experiment was designed to rule out the possibility that the kids in the first experiment targeted the bad guys because they were interested in the bad guys. This time, they don't equip infant gaze trackers, so infant gaze can't destroy animated objects. In such a context, when the same image of 'bullying' is shown to the child, the child's eyes are not fixed on the bad guy.

The researchers concluded, believing that people's perception of 'third-party punishment for antisocial people' is inherent, not through upbringing.