Huff Post
Are we born with morality? Do we have a sense of right or wrong from day one? Or are we just blank canvases that society paints on? If put in an extreme situation, could an ordinary person grow up to be a psychopath?
According to the Oxford Dictionary, ethics are “moral principles that govern a person’s or group’s behavior” whereas morality is defined as “the extent to which an action is right or wrong.” Ethics are specific to one group of people, while morality implies moral principles that relate to human beings more generally. For example stealing in general is considered bad and killing people is considered worse. Being kind is good and self-sacrificing even better.
At the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University, scientists are running studies to see if babies have an innate sense of good and evil. What they do is they show babies of about six months of age a puppet show. In one show they have a puppet trying to climb up a hill, but he can’t get up it. Then another puppet comes along that helps him up. Then they show it again but instead of the puppet helping him, a different puppet appears and pushes the first puppet down the hill. They run through this cycle six to 14 times, alternating between the puppet being helped by one puppet and pushed down by another. They then “ask” the infant to choose between the good puppet and the bad puppet. Around 80 percent of the time the infant will choose the good puppet over the one that pushed the other puppet down the hill.