Baby, Baby

Babies have long been known to be freeloading, pants-shitting, boob-crazed whiners with an entitlement complex who refuse to get jobs or learn English, even though this is America. But for years, another aspect of their tiny, angry personalities was slightly less obvious: are they also jerks? Five years ago, a group of researchers claimed that a series of tests had concluded that babies do not actively wish fellow human beings harm, that from a very wee age, they're capable of telling the difference between right and wrong. But now, new evidence has thrown those findings into a playpen of doubt, again putting babies' morality (or lack thereof) in the hot (booster) seat.

According to the original "Babies Are Not Total Dicks After All" research, babies as young as 6 months old prefer interacting with prosocial individuals. Researchers determined this by showing the babies puppet shows involving a wooden doll that was trying to climb a hill and either helped up or pushed down the hill by another wooden doll. Following the show, the tiny, gurgling study subjects were offered a choice to play with either the helper puppet or the hinderer puppet. In almost all cases, the babies selected the helper puppet, which, to researchers, demonstrated that they recognized that the helper puppet was good, and that they preferred to hang around good people (the wanting to hang around bad people phase doesn't start until the babies are teenagers and angry at their fathers). Case closed. Babies are good.

Not so fast.

Researchers who tried to stage the experiment again found that babies would react differently to the puppets depending on how the puppet attempting to climb the hill acted.
~ from Babies Look Cute, But Are They Actually Jerks? by Erin Gloria Ryan ~