Psychologists at the University of Toronto have found that we begin to make moral character judgments as early as 12 months old.
The research, published in Communications Psychology , also recognizes that individuals can exist along a moral spectrum and suggests that early social interactions may play a role in shaping infants' moral judgments.
"As adults, we think there are good people, bad people and people who are somewhere in between," says Jessica Sommerville, a professor in the department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science. "It seems like infants are thinking the same way."
PhD student Norman Zeng, who was first author on the paper with Sommerville and recent PhD grad Inderpreet Gill, explains that while previous research has found that infants can make rudimentary moral character judgments, those studies have focused on interactions between only two agents with clear moral roles: good or bad; helpful or unhelpful; or fair or unfair.
"But we add a new dimension to this by adding a character that is more morally ambiguous - like a bystander," says Zeng. "It seems like infants view this character as morally ambiguous as well, not really expecting them to be good or bad in future scenarios."
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For the study, researchers showed more than 250 infants (aged 12 to 24 months) animated videos of basic geometric shapes interacting that reliably establish moral character judgments among adults. In one version, a character (victim) is chased and hit by another (villain), while a third character - the hero - tries to intervene and protect the victim. In another, the hero is swapped out for a bystander who witnesses the same interaction without intervening.
They then investigated how infants expect each of the established characters to act when distributing resources in another moral scenario - in this case, by sharing four strawberries between two new characters.
"We know from past research that infants look at things longer when they are more surprising. If an object violates the law of gravity and floats in the air, infants might look longer at that," says Zeng. "So, we can leverage this looking time to tell us about what infants may be thinking."
They found that infants looked longer at distribution scenarios where a character's actions were inconsistent with those from the initial interaction they observed. Infants expected heroes to fairly distribute their resources, giving two strawberries to each recipient. While adults may sometimes engage in victim-blaming by not necessarily seeing victims as entirely "good," infants expected victims to act fairly, too. On the other hand, they expected villains to act unfairly, favouring one recipient over the other.
Infants had more ambiguous expectations of bystanders - neither expecting them to be fair nor unfair in sharing their treats.
These findings suggest that infants can use limited evidence about an individual's moral actions in one context to shape their expectations around how they will act in another. At the same time, they recognize that individuals can also exist somewhere between good and bad, and are unsure what morally ambiguous characters will do in the future.
"This research might help us understand why as adults, we so quickly make these character judgments," says Sommerville. "It is something that is in play really early on and gets really entrenched."
The study's authors also found that an infant's experience with daycare or siblings did not independently predict how well they could judge an individual's moral character. But taken together, these variables are associated with an infant's ability to better differentiate between a character's moral leanings. These findings suggest that early social interactions may shape an individual's moral judgment and the moral decisions they make throughout their lives.
More research is needed to determine how far these findings extend. For example, psychologists are studying whether infants think that someone who is helpful is also more competent. They are also investigating how much infants' moral sensitivities look like those of older children and adults.
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
