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posted by janrinok on Saturday June 18 2022, @11:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the was-Betteridge-born-with-a-moral-compass? dept.

Researchers from Osaka University find that infants can make moral judgments on behalf of others:

For millennia, philosophers have pondered the question of whether humans are inherently good. But now, researchers from Japan have found that young infants can make and act on moral judgments, shedding light on the origin of morality.

[...] Punishment of antisocial behavior is found in only humans, and is universal across cultures. However, the development of moral behavior is not well understood. Further, it can be very difficult to examine decision-making and agency in infants, which the researchers at Osaka University aimed to address.

"Morality is an important but mysterious part of what makes us human," says lead author of the study Yasuhiro Kanakogi. "We wanted to know whether third-party punishment of antisocial others is present at a very young age, because this would help to signal whether morality is learned."

To tackle this problem, the researchers developed a new research paradigm. First, they familiarized infants with a computer system in which animations were displayed on a screen. The infants could control the actions on the screen using a gaze-tracking system such that looking at an object for a sufficient period of time led to the destruction of the object. The researchers then showed a video in which one geometric agent appeared to "hurt" another geometric agent, and watched whether the infants "punished" the antisocial geometric agent by gazing at it.

"The results were surprising," says Kanakogi. "We found that preverbal infants chose to punish the antisocial aggressor by increasing their gaze towards the aggressor."

Accompanying video.

Journal Reference:
Kanakogi, Y., Miyazaki, M., Takahashi, H. et al. Third-party punishment by preverbal infants. Nat Hum Behav (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01354-2


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @11:21AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @11:21AM (#1254372)

    Morality can be seen as a form of self interest, if you consider life as a single process with many instances. This doesn't devalue it. In fact, moral teachings adhering to a scientifically measurable advantage say a lot about who came up with them.

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 19 2022, @12:09PM (2 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday June 19 2022, @12:09PM (#1254373) Journal

    I'd say true moral behaviour (assuming the kids see the shapes as sentient beings) would be to stop gazing at them as soon as they recognize that staring at them will harm them.

    True morality is not to punish bad behaviour from others, but to refrain from bad behaviour yourself even when that bad behaviour will not have negative consequences for yourself.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @07:10PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @07:10PM (#1254445)

      Indeed.

      The comment you replied to is important, but typically is a response meant to justify the "everyone is selfish" ideology that lets selfish people feel less guilty. There are plenty of people that do good things for no selfish reason. Some say the act of being nice is the reward, but I call bullshit since I've done many nice things for people then carried on with no sense of satisfaction or ego boost, it was just helping someone out, so there is a sample size of one!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @09:52PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @09:52PM (#1254468)

      That's one moral code. There are others. Not everybody shares the same morality. Just listen to the fights about abortion. Or capital punishment. Or corporal punishment. Or incarceration. Or retribution, restoration and deterrence in punishment. Or homosexuality. Or trans-sexual identity. In fact, there are moral nihilists who have no view on the nature of good and evil, but they often adhere to ethical codes that relate to pragmatic outcomes.