What is it about?
Humans are an extraordinarily cooperative species and care about moral issues, such as avoiding unnecessary harm. But what enables us to develop a moral sense? When do children understand others’ behavior as moral as opposed to merely conventional, (un)expected, or disobedient? These are questions that date back at least to ancient Greece. They have typically been answered by pointing to either human reason and rationality (rationalism) or to human emotions (sentimentalism). This work addresses questions about the origins of human morality empirically in 18-month-old human infants using multiple methods.
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Why is it important?
Human cooperation and morality remain important puzzles different scientific disciplines aim to solve. Taking a developmental perspective may help us better understand how humans become (and became) ultra-cooperative. Using multiple methods (eye-tracking and observations of facial expressions) may contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying human moral development and cognition.
Perspectives
At least ever since Plato and Aristotle, scholars (and lay people) have wondered about and discussed the origins of our moral capacity. Going beyond the typical opposition between emotions and reason, the current work suggests that both social-cognitive and socio-affective processes play a key role in infants’ moral development. Infants used their social-cognitive and language skills to infer harm from observing an otherwise ambiguous action (i.e., tearing apart a picture can be fine or not depending on context). And it seems that their early concern for the well-being of others may help them differentiate between morally relevant (harmful) actions and other violations that are harmless (such as eating chocolate mousse with one’s fingers).
Marco F. H. Schmidt
Universitat Konstanz
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Human infants are aroused and concerned by moral transgressions, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2306344120.
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