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Study suggests humans are predisposed to moral behavior from birth

A team of researchers from Osaka University in Japan used a gaze-tracking computer system to test preverbal infants' ability to recognize antisocial behavior, and their results suggest infants are instinctually driven to act against actions deemed negative and harmful without needing to be told.

(CN) — For as long as people have elected to study themselves, they have debated the origins of the human condition and associated behaviors: are we genetically driven toward certain behaviors, or do we learn them over time as social creatures? Scientists in Japan delved into the question of nature versus nurture surrounding antisocial behavior and discovered evidence of an evolutionary component.

A team of researchers from Osaka University, in collaboration with Otsuma Women’s University, NTT Communication Science Laboratories and the University of Tokyo used a novel method to study preverbal infants and their ability to identify and then punish antisocial behavior. The findings were published Thursday in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

The goal was to learn what preverbal infants would do when presented with visual representations of antisocial behavior after being given the means to act in response to those representations. To achieve this, researchers presented a group of infants with a computer system that would display information and take input via eye movement tracking.

“The infants could control the actions on the screen using a gaze-tracking system such that looking at an object for a sufficient period of time led to the destruction of the object,” according to a press release on the study.

Once the infants were familiar with the input system, “researchers then showed a video in which one geometric agent appeared to ‘hurt’ another,” and the infant was able to respond by staring at the agent until an animated block fell and crushed it, even after the immediate aggression was no longer being shown and the infant could again interact with the system.

“The results were surprising,” said Yasuhiro Kanakogi, lead author of the study, in a statement. “We found that preverbal infants chose to punish the antisocial aggressor by increasing their gaze towards the aggressor.”

After a series of control experiments to verify the intent of the infants’ actions, researchers concluded that the infants were automatically acting to punish antisocial behavior that they observed.

“The observation of this behavior in very young children indicates that humans may have acquired behavioral tendencies toward moral behavior during the course of evolution,” Kanakogi said. “Specifically, the punishment for antisocial behavior may have evolved as an important element of human cooperation.”

While the practice of punishing antisocial behavior is only found in humans, the study represents the first instance of such actions being employed automatically and inherently, rather than being learned via social interaction. Such behavior suggests that fundamental moral understandings are baked into the human genome via evolutionary processes, rather than knowledge only being passed from other people.

Through this lens, we may not be able to answer all metaphysical questions as to the inherent morality of humans, but the study suggests that humans are — down to our DNA — social creatures that instinctually promote positive social behavior.

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