The hypothesis of innate morality was tested using a thousand infants.

The ability to distinguish between commendable actions and those deserving of criticism is considered a fundamental human trait. In 2007, a group of researchers led by Kiley Hamlin from Yale University (USA) conducted a series of experiments that demonstrated that even at just one year old, children possess a sense of good and evil and tend to favor prosocial behaviors. Subsequent attempts by followers to replicate the experiment yielded mixed results.

Recently, a large team of scientists from 40 research groups worldwide, specializing in developmental psychology and child behavior observations in experimental settings, made a new attempt. In this project, they tested 1,018 infants, making it the largest study of its kind conducted to date.

Following the example of their predecessors, the researchers showed infants aged between 5.5 and 10.5 months a presentation featuring toy characters that behaved differently. One character helped another climb a hill, while the other hindered and pushed the latter down.

After watching, the infants were asked to choose one of the characters. According to previous findings, all six-month-old infants and the majority of ten-month-olds preferred the positive, "helping" character.

The new series of tests on a larger sample did not reveal such a preference. The children were split roughly evenly: about half of the infants chose helping characters, while almost the same number selected hindering ones.

As a result, the researchers concluded that the experiment does not support the innate nature of morality.

“Children under 10 months are not yet able to distinguish a good deed from a bad one,” stated one of the study's authors, Markus Paulus, a professor in the Department of Developmental Psychology and Educational Psychology at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich (Germany).

The article detailing the results of this new work was published in the journal Developmental Science.