Did you catch a baby's eyes and suddenly feel judged? According to new research, feeling may not be completely fictional.
If you've done something that a baby doesn't like, they might be looking at you differently.
Evidence has been found that preverbal children are moral third party observers.
Babies in the study focused their attention on the aggressor after seeing an act of aggression.
If the baby stared at the attacker for a long time, the character would disappear.
The babies were given the ability to see only what's happening in front of them.
According to some psychologists, this stare is a sign of intent to punish, because the baby is forced to focus on the attacker until they leave.
The authors can't be certain if the babies intended to punish the attacker or if they just wanted to be careful.
Communication is so limited that it's hard to measure decision-making in pre verbal children. toddlers as young as 19 months are willing to act as third-party judges and take treats away from people who are not nice.
If the authors are correct, a stare down could be the earliest sign of a moral compass in a child.
"Morality is an important but mysterious part of what makes us human," says Kanakogi.
We wanted to know if third-party punishment of other people is common at a young age.
Experiments were done to find out why 8-month-old babies are more focused on people who commit social faux pas.
One of the most obvious social gaffes known to infants is physical aggression in the form of hitting.
Research shows that early infants can tell the difference between a hit and a fight. They also don't like this kind of behavior.
The experiments were done on a computer Babies were sitting in front of the screen to see two characters. If they stared long enough at a character it would destroy their eyes.
The babies were shown a video of a character hitting another. The babies were shown both characters side by side.
The experiment was repeated many times with different variations, including a soft hit from a falling object, and an equal chance of both characters being punished. To make sure the kids didn't prefer the aggressor characters more, or that they were watching to make sure the aggressor was punished, this was done.
Young children are giving out punishment for violent social interactions.
It was surprising. According to Kanakogi, pre verbal infants chose to punish the aggressive person by increasing their gaze.
Humans may have developed tendencies toward moral behavior during the course of evolution, according to the observation of this behavior in young children. The punishment of deviant behavior may have evolved as a part of human cooperation.
The study was published in a journal.
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