Interesting. I've long claimed that most of your basic social mores have a rational basis; adhering to them prevents social disorder and makes civilized soceity a more desirable place to live than the alternative. It has never really occurred to me that a tendency to behave in a moral manner would be an evolved trait; I've always assumed that humans are basically born amoral and that morality is a learned behavior, through parenting, instruction, and by example. But it sort of makes sense that it might be an evolved trait -- presumably, a person is more likely to live long enough to reproduce and raise children to adulthood in a civilization than in an anarchy, and so people who favor living in anarchy tend to be selected out.

Not that I necessarily disagree with the overall point drawn, but I think that concluding from baby gaze tests that the babies think that a situation is unfair is an enormous stretch, to the point that it reduces any credibility of a person who considers a study like this "science."

(I studied psychology and am familiar with baby gaze tests, so it's not a matter of not understanding the premise. I just think it's absurd to make the leap.)

As a social group species we would need some rudementery morality, but nowhere near the complex system to live in a society larger than a tribe of a hundred or so.

That I would think would still need to be taught

It's been fascinating watching my daughter's sense of emotional awareness evolve.

We were at Target when a pre-schooler went completely nuts. He wanted to play with a toy vacuum, and his mother wanted to leave, and he had a screaming, crying tantrum. My 5-month-old baby started to cry. It wasn't the startled cry she sometimes cries when there's a loud noise. Her lip was quivering and everything. I reassured her that the boy was OK and she was OK, and she settled down.

The main issue with this kind of work is not usually the habituation/dishabituation paradigm (i.e., inferring "unexpectedness" from gaze time), but identifying the critical feature of the "unexpected" display (i.e., what makes it unexpected). Without knowing anything about this study other than what's stated in this blog post and especially without having seen the actual displays, it's difficult to say how reasonable the interpretation in terms of morality is. For example (and, based on what I know, I don't know if this is a reasonable explanation for the current study), what might be unexpected is not the injustice of one giraffe getting more toys than the other, but the fact that the empty-handed giraffe doesn't move towards the toys.

Here's a good blog post detailing some concerns with (quite different) baby gaze studies:

http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/are-babies-super-performance-competence.html

Babies' gaze was only significantly longer in the unfairness condition. There were two other conditions. This was tested multiple times, not just in the one I posted (and not just in this study). (I can only take notes and translate this stuff so fast.)

Unfairness conditions cause babies to gaze much longer.

No, unevenness caused the babies to gaze longer. The researchers inferred that this was based on a sense of fairness, but it could just be based on asymmetry being more visually interesting. Or they could be thinking "That giraffe with all the toys must be really awesome." Or anything else. Just because they found it more interesting doesn't mean that they found it unfair, or that they found unfairness objectionable. That's an enormous leap.

Amy, my intent was to object to the conclusions drawn from the study by the researchers, and since you didn't present the study, I did not intend that to be an insult to you. Quite frankly, because you do always put so much focus on questioning things, I assumed that you just thought it was interesting, and expected the reader to approach with skepticism. But, maybe not.

So Amy and Lyssa both have interesting comments, and me, not knowing any more about the subject than I do, I'm trying to learn something about this. What basically are the baby gaze tests supposed to infer? Is it the basic methodology that the scene that receives the longer gaze is more interesting or unusual? We all know that there is a pretty strong bias towards left-right symmertry in human visual processing. Could the scene have been done differently in such a way that the left-right asymmetry didn't exist, say, by placing one scene above or below the other? Maybe they did that. I need to find time to go read it.

An evolutionary bias towards moral behavior is plausible, but it does go somewhat against current conventional wisdom. My impression is that the bulk of the existing early-childood theory holds that young children are basically oriented towards amoral selfishness, and that empathy and enlightened self-interest are things that have to be learned. Also, if there's an evolutionary preference towards moral behavior, that would seem to run counter to most historical and current politics.

What Lyssa said:

No, unevenness caused the babies to gaze longer. The researchers inferred that this was based on a sense of fairness, but it could just be based on asymmetry being more visually interesting. Or they could be thinking "That giraffe with all the toys must be really awesome." Or anything else. Just because they found it more interesting doesn't mean that they found it unfair, or that they found unfairness objectionable. That's an enormous leap.

Yup - all of those other reasons are far more plausible than "fairness".

Let's remember that these infants will - when they're old enough to sit up - treat other kids in the sandbox like inanimate objects, and even after they recognize them as fellow humans, will still blithely steal, slap, and mash them to get the toy they want.

Or as Cousin Dave says:

My impression is that the bulk of the existing early-childood theory holds that young children are basically oriented towards amoral selfishness, and that empathy and enlightened self-interest are things that have to be learned.

Yeah, "existing early-childhood theory" - backed up by several thousand years of practical experience...

It's also interesting to note that The Goddess simultaneously calls out boorish adults and children while pushing the notion that morality comes naturally - isn't a lot of the rudeness and lack of moral standards the result of several post-60s generations "doing what comes naturally"?

I don't find this unusual at all. Small children are often known to shout "not fair" or "he had it LAST time" and similar. They are ACUTELY aware of fairness. For that matter, if you want to find somebody who believes strongly in personal property rights, find a 3-5 year old. Of course, at the younger end, they may believe that "I saw it means it's mine," but they'll be passionate about it!

Gah, now you've given me more reading. I'm taking human lifespan developmental bio/psyc this summer and we are just in a section about a lot of what babies do and don't like to look at and what it does or doesn't mean (who really cares? Babies are just scrumptiously irresistible!-my 2 cents) so I'll be interested in the methodology. I know they prefer graphic patterns to color and peoples faces to other items. We still have this really awesome elephant DH drew for our babies when they were tiny, to put in their bassinet to look at. Just a black outline of an elephant, with large black polka dots all over it. They were just entranced!

I can see Lyssa's point. I think most people instinctually have a sense of "justice" from birth. The difference is, how they start applying that sense of justice as they go through life. That is where the learned behavior and environment come in to play. I'm not dismissing this study, but I agree that it's hard to say what was actually going on in a baby's mind.

Sometimes, it's about how the data is interpreted and by who. Even good science can be interpreted in a way tha makes a case stronger for whatever the study is trying to prove/disprove. There is still a human being interpreting the data, after all. Even in well-controled studies like this one, there are potentially other human or uncontrollable factors that could attribute to the babies reaction.

It's not unreasonable to think that may only be one part of the equation. There could be a combination of things going on in the babies mind. Everything babies experience is a new thing and not all babies are alike. The babies reaction to the giraffe could be a combination of fairness as suggested by the study along with genuine curiosity and unevenness as suggested by Lyssa. I mean, they are babies. They don't have the congnitive ability to understand and interpret things like that, yet; Babies react soley on instinct at first. They are little sponges and absorb everything in their environment. Unless they scientists also had brain wave scanners that could actually translate the thought processes of the babies in the study, how can they really say for sure what the baby was thinking or feeling and why the gaze time at the giraffe with the duck toy was longer? They can theorize, but to say that their reaction is soley because of the babies sense of "fairness" is a bit of a stretch for me, too. Fairness is very subjective. What seems fair to me, may not seem fair to you.