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1-Page Summary of Just Babies

Overview

We all have our own moral standards. But what makes us think that they’re the right ones? We could just be wrong about them, because other people might not agree with us. It’s possible to believe something is good when it really isn’t. Our morals differ from culture to culture, but there are some common themes throughout humanity.

Paul Bloom shows us how babies have the capacity to make moral choices, just like adults do. Even though some of our decisions are learned through customs and imitation, our basic emotions play a key role in our moral reasoning.

In-groups are different from strangers. Society and religion influence the way we think about morality.

In this article, we’ll learn about some interesting facts about babies, sociopaths, religion and morality. Some of the things we’ll learn are: why babies prefer people of their own race; how sociopaths are able to commit such gruesome crimes; that being religious doesn’t necessarily make you a more moral person; why we don’t eat our deceased loved ones; and why children sometimes prefer to throw away treats.

Big Idea #1: Some form of moral judgement seems to be innate.

Everyone has probably looked at a baby and wondered what it’s thinking. Babies have some feelings about right and wrong, even when they’re born.

Even though we can’t ask babies about their moral judgments, researchers have found ways to make educated guesses. In one experiment, they showed images of a ball trying to go up a hill with either helpful or hindering characters and then showed the ball approaching either the helpful character or the hindering character. They found that both nine- and 12-month-old infants spent more time looking at images where the ball approached the hindering character than when it approached the helpful character.

The researchers concluded that the children had learned to expect a certain reaction from the ball and were surprised when it reacted differently.

In a second experiment, the researchers added eyes to the shapes. They wanted to see if children would make social judgements about hindering characters with those features.

Critics of the experiment think it only shows that babies developed expectations of what would happen. Therefore, the researchers conducted a third experiment where they used 3D puppets instead of 2D animated shapes. They found out that kids preferred to help the ball rather than hinder it by reaching for the puppet who helped it and pushing away from the one who hindered it.

Almost all the babies reached for the helpful puppet, demonstrating an innate sense of good and bad.

Big Idea #2: Even babies and young children respond to the pain of others.

If you’ve been a parent, you know how difficult it can be to care for young children. But if you’re surprised to hear that kids are capable of supporting others, then maybe you haven’t had the chance to see them in action.

Babies can feel the pain of others. In fact, they’re born with that ability. They react to other babies’ cries in a way that shows that they understand what’s going on and are emotionally affected by it.

Experiments have shown that babies cry less when they hear a random computer-generated noise at the same volume as another child crying. This shows that it’s another person’s suffering that elicits their response.

Children also try to soothe others. They react when they see someone else in pain by trying to comfort them. This behavior seems innate, as we can observe it in our primitive ancestors, such as chimpanzees who pat and groom an ape that’s been hurt. However, children haven’t yet mastered this ability; sometimes they inadvertently make themselves feel sad because seeing other people be in pain makes them feel bad too.