Researchers J. Kiley Hamlin, Karen Wynn & Paul Bloom have found that babies as young as six months are able to make judgements about the helpfulness or nastiness of others and show a preference for those who are helpful. The infants watched a puppet show which depicted a circle with googly-eyes trying to climb a hill. it was either helped by a triangle with googly-eyes or hindered by a googly-eyed square. When later given the opportunity to hold the helper or hinderer, 14 out of 16 10-month-olds and all 12 6-month-olds chose the helper.
The effect was less marked when the googly-eyes were removed. The study was published in Nature. Click here for a summary from Nature News.
… or maybe babies prefer googly-eyed triangles to googly-eyed squares. The researchers should have controlled for this by having the square as the helper for half of the babies and the triangle as the helper for the other half.
Can anyone suggest another criticism? There is a really obvious one that any A level Psychology student should be able to spot straight away. Please comment below
Last modified on Wednesday, 16 January 2008 04:26
