Babies size us up as helpful or hindering: study

0 Comments | AFP, November, 2007

PARIS (AFP) — Babies watching social interaction reach out approvingly to individuals who help others but shun bullies who obstruct someone trying to complete a task, a study released Wednesday suggests.

The ability to size people up quickly based on the way they treat each other is an essential skill for adults.

But this is the first study to conclude that pre-verbal infants are able to make similar judgements and act on them.

The experiments at Yale University, involving tots aged six and 10 months, also suggest that this capacity is a survival skill acquired through evolution and may serve as the foundation for moral thought and action.

In the first of three experiments, Kiley Hamlin and two colleagues at Yale showed infants a character made of...