Summary: A large international replication study challenges the belief that morality is innate in infants. Testing over 1,000 children aged 5.5 to 10.5 months, researchers found no consistent preference for characters exhibiting prosocial behavior.
Unlike previous studies suggesting that infants favor helpful characters, the new findings reveal an even split in choices between helpers and hinderers. These results suggest that infants under ten months cannot distinguish between morally good and bad actions, raising questions about the innateness of morality.
Key Facts:
- Over 1,000 infants showed no consistent preference for prosocial characters.
- Findings contradict earlier studies suggesting innate moral understanding in infants.
- The study, the largest of its kind, involved 40 developmental psychology teams.
Source: LMU
The question as to whether morality is innate has been hotly debated in developmental psychology for decades.
Studies have yielded mixed results, although a series of studies suggested that infants already have an understanding of situations in which moral action is required, and that they prefer characters who are good.
These findings were seen as evidence that morality is innate.
Now research teams from around the world have joined forces in a replication study to test previous findings.
Their results, which have been published in the journal Developmental Science, make it clear: “There is no evidence for innate morality. Children under ten months are not yet capable of distinguishing a good action from a bad one,” says Professor Markus Paulus, Chair of Developmental Psychology and Educational Psychology at LMU Munich.
International replication study, innovative approach
More than 1,000 infants between the ages of 5.5 and 10.5 months took part in the study.
In an experimental framework, they were presented with scenarios featuring characters who behaved differently. Sometimes they helped another character up a hill, and sometimes they hindered the character and pushed it down the hill. Subsequently, the children were prompted to choose between the two characters.
Previous findings had suggested that infants preferred the helping character. However, in the new study, the largest conducted to date, around half of the children chose the helping character, while the other half chose the hindering one.
“Thus, the children showed no preference for the character that behaved prosocially and helped another character,” says Markus Paulus.
The study was carried out by 40 developmental psychology research teams from all over the world, which are specialized in the behavioral observation of children in experimental settings.
As well as the Markus Paulus laboratory, the team of PD Dr. Tobias Schuwerk was another contributor from LMU.
Markus Paulus describes the idea of the worldwide collaborative project on infant research as highly innovative and promising as a way of reviewing existing research findings.
In addition to LMU, the following German research institutions contributed to the study: Ruhr University Bochum, the University of Göttingen, Leipzig University, the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology, the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig.
About this morality and neurodevelopment research news
Author: Markus Paulus
Source: LMU
Contact: Markus Paulus – LMU
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Infants’ Social Evaluation of Helpers and Hinderers, A Large Scale, Multi-Lab, Coordinated Replication Study” by Markus Paulus et al. Developmental Science
Abstract
Infants’ Social Evaluation of Helpers and Hinderers, A Large Scale, Multi-Lab, Coordinated Replication Study
Evaluating whether someone’s behavior is praiseworthy or blameworthy is a fundamental human trait.
A seminal study by Hamlin and colleagues in 2007 suggested that the ability to form social evaluations based on third-party interactions emerges within the first year of life: infants preferred a character who helped, over hindered, another who tried but failed to climb a hill.
This sparked a new line of inquiry into the origins of social evaluations; however, replication attempts have yielded mixed results.
We present a preregistered, multi-laboratory, standardized study aimed at replicating infants’ preference for Helpers over Hinderers.
We intended to (1) provide a precise estimate of the effect size of infants’ preference for Helpers over Hinderers, and (2) determine the degree to which preferences are based on social information.
Using the ManyBabies framework for big team-based science, we tested 1018 infants (567 included, 5.5–10.5 months) from 37 labs across five continents.
Overall, 49.34% of infants preferred Helpers over Hinderers in the social condition, and 55.85% preferred characters who pushed up, versus down, an inanimate object in the nonsocial condition; neither proportion differed from chance or from each other.
This study provides evidence against infants’ prosocial preferences in the hill paradigm, suggesting the effect size is weaker, absent, and/or develops later than previously estimated.
As the first of its kind, this study serves as a proof-of-concept for using active behavioral measures (e.g., manual choice) in large-scale, multi-lab projects studying infants.
