Are Babies Born Good?
Researching the moral decisions of infants:
“The study of babies and young toddlers is a perplexing business. Even the most perceptive observers can be tempted to see what isn’t there. ‘When our infant was only four months old I thought that he tried to imitate sounds; but I may have deceived myself,’ Charles Darwin wrote in ‘A Biographical Sketch of an Infant,’ his classic study of his own son. Babies don’t reliably control their bodies or communicate well, if at all, so their opinions can’t be solicited through ordinary means. Instead, researchers outfit them with miniature wire skullcaps to monitor their brain waves, scrutinize them like shoplifters through video cameras and two-way mirrors, and conduct exceedingly clever and tightly controlled experiments, which a good portion of their subjects will refuse to sit through anyway. Even well-behaved babies are notoriously tough to read: Their most meditative expressions are often the sign of an impending bowel movement.”