Even at six months babies know who the bad guys are

Nov 22 2007

Even though babies at six months have just about got the hang of sitting up but cannot yet walk or talk, it seems they nevertheless have the ability to discern who is nice and who is not.

According to new research, at six months babies can figure out a person's intentions towards them and decide who is likely to be a friend or an enemy.

The researchers, from Yale University suggest pre-verbal infants have the ability to make social evaluations in the first few months of life.

Kiley Hamlin, lead author of the research and her colleagues conducted a study to test this theory by showing babies a variety of wooden characters, one of which looked like it was trying to climb a hill, with another trying to push it down and the third trying to help the first reach the hill's summit.

The researchers found that up to 80% of infants when showed all of the characters reached out for the helping figure, as opposed to the figure portrayed as the bad-guy.

Hamlin, a Yale psychology researcher, says while they are not suggesting that babies have a sense of morality, they do appear to react positively to those who do good things and negatively towards those who do bad things.

This say the researchers could be an important piece of a later more rational and moral system and shows that these essential social skills occur with little explicit teaching.

The researchers say infants appear to prefer an individual who helps another to one who hinders another, prefer a helping individual to a neutral individual and prefer a neutral individual to a hindering individual.

They believe their findings are evidence that pre-verbal infants assess individuals on the basis of their behaviour towards others.

Hamlin says babies are more intelligent than we think and are competent social creatures from an early age.

Other research has found that babies in the first six months of life show preferences for others based on the attractiveness of their face.

Experts however agree that it is not until the age of 18 months that toddlers are true social creatures, and will cooperate with others of their own accord.

The study appears in the current issue of the journal Nature.