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Jun 2, 2010

"I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after." --Ernest Hemingway

Moral Life of Babies

Not long ago, Paul Bloom watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. On a quest to discover the nature of morality, Bloom and his fellow researchers are exploring the moral lives of babies for the answer. While it may seem like babies are helpless, ignorant, and undisciplined, recent studies at Yale University's Infant Cognition Center indicates that, even in the first year of life, some sense of good and bad is bred in the bone. In a study in which children watch a puppet steal a ball from two others, Bloom watched the 1-year-old boy punish the wrong-doing puppet. "Babies possess certain moral foundations - the capacity and willingness to judge the actions of others, some sense of justice, gut responses to altruism and nastiness. Regardless of how smart we are, if we didn't start with this basic apparatus, we would be nothing more than amoral agents," Bloom concludes.