Title Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil
Author Paul Boom
Year Published 2013
Kind of Book Psychology/Ethics/Developmental Psychology
How strongly I recommend it 8/10
My Impressions This was one of the first psychology books I ever read. I took an online course with the author Paul Bloom, on coursera and he recommended it. The first half of the book talks about the studies he did with infants and how they had a strong sense of right and wrong at a very young age. The second half of the book ties the findings into the broader conversation thinkers have been having for millenia about human nature and if we come out of the womb with a hard wired ethical framework.
Date Read circa 2013, February 2022
What question is the author trying to answer?
Do babies have moral intuitions?
Is morality learned?
Big Ideas
Our morality is not fully formed at birth
However
Certain moral foundations are already present at birth and are products of biological evolution (ie. Nurture is not responsible for shaping our morals 100%)
Psychologists can tell if babies recognize the difference between 2 things by showing them one thing until they get bored and then showing them something else. If they stare longer at the new thing it means they recognize it as being different
15 month olds can predict people's behaviors based on their false beliefs
Babies (as young as 3months old) prefer to look at the "good guys" in animated movies and puppet shows
[SP] Looking longer at something is a sign that a baby prefers it
Therefore
Babies have a general appreciation of good and bad behavior
Sociopaths sometimes kill out of a state of curiosity
Psychopaths can be successful in the short term
However
Most psychopaths eventually end up in prison or worse
Parents can experience new experiences vicariously through their children and therefore relive them
People feel more empathy towards people they like than people they don't like
(sometimes) When someone who has double-crossed up gets injured, the pleasure centers in our brain light up
It is possible to feel compassion without feeling empathy (eg. Being moved to help someone without feeling their pair
It is possible to feel empathy without feeling compassion (eg. Wanting someone's suffering to happen elsewhere so you don't feel it)
Infants/toddlers are unlikely to share with strangers
However
A child's unwillingness to share their toys with a stranger is no different than an adult's unwillingness to share their car keys with a stranger
Babies feel distress (ie. Guilt) when they harm others in the first year of life
Distress (ie. guilt) grows stronger as a baby ages
Young children have a strong equality bias ie. A bias towards dividing up resources evenly among people (regardless of what others did to deserve it or not deserve it) (even if it means throwing away extra resources so that NOONE gets more than others)
Young children show a strong equality bias long before going to school or day care
Therefore
School and daycare are not responsible for forming children's strong equality bias
6-8 year olds believe resources should be divided evenly if everyone did the same amount of work (even if it means throwing away extra resources) unless someone did more work, then they think they should get the extra resources
Older children and adults deem an act nicer based on the proportion of how much they have vs. how much they gave
Whereas
Young children deem an act nicer based on absolute amount given
People will sometimes do something to harm their own interest out of spite in order to keep the other from obtaining what they want
There are some games where it benefits you to make the other player think that you are irrational
We evolved in environments in which we had many interactions with the same person and the way we interacted with them in the past effected our future interactions
Therefore
Our mind evolved to make decisions that are beneficial to us over a long time horizon (not one offs)
Therefore
We often don't make rational decisions in interactions with strangers that are one-offs
Apologies act to repair the victim's status
If some one harms some one and doesn't apologize, they are sending the message that that person is not important/significant enough to expend the energy needed to apologize
Victim's of a slight (or perceived slight) may react by fighting or a verbal challenge as a way to recover their status
Honor cultures spring out of places where people can't rely on external authority (eg. Police) to restore justice when they have been treated unjustly
Therefore
In honor cultures people feel they must take matters into their own hands when they are treated unjustly
There is usually a parent around to resolve toddlers conflicts and injustices
Therefore
Toddlers don't have to take matters into their own hands when treated unjustly
Therefore
Toddlers don't live in honor cultures
Kids who are discouraged to tattle don't believe someone else will resolve their injustices for them
Therefore
Kids who are discouraged to tattle are more likely to retaliate when they are treated unjustly
A two-year old with the physical capacities of an adult would be terrifying
Babies have a preference for people who look similar to the people they are used to seeing (eg. Mom and Dad)
Our hunter-gather ancestors only traveled on foot
[SP] a tribe of people traveling by foot would not have been able to cover enough distance to meet people who looked distinctly different from them (ie. A different ethnicity)
Therefore
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have never met someone belonging to a different race
The Nazis purposefully denied Jewish prisoners access to bathrooms so that when they had to relieve themselves they would have to go openly on the train tracks in front of German passengers who would see this, be disgusted, indifferent to their suffering, and think because they were so vile, they deserved their treatment.
Disgust causes people to be indifferent to another person's suffering
Disgust triggers people to hate and want to exterminate a person/group of people
Disgust causes people to dehumanize other people
All genocidal movements use rhetoric comparing the enemy to disgusting vermin (eg. Like cockroaches and rats)
Young child are not disgusted by many things we find disgusting (eg. Poop, boogers,
If left unattended young children will touch and/or eat many things adults find disgusting (eg. Poop, boogers etc.)
A some point in early childhood children start to become disgusted by many of the things adults are disgusted by
Even if it were true that children only find their body products gross because adults find them gross, it still begs the question: Why do adults find them gross?
Newborns are constantly shitting themselves and can't do anything about it
Therefore
If babies had a disgust instinct when they were first born it would be constantly triggered
Natural selection is not needlessly cruel
Therefore
Newborn babies don’t have a disgust instinct until they get older (when they can do something about the thing disgusting them)
Disgust triggers feelings that the other lacks humanity
And
Empathy triggers feelings that the other person is human just like you
Therefore
Disgust is the opposite of empathy
Homosexual activity poses no risk of creating malformed offspring
Homosexual activity is beneficial (ie. an adaptation) in that is strengthens the social bonds between two people
Travel broadens the mind
Reading literature is a form of travel
Therefore
Reading Literature broadens the mind
Counterintuitive findings are more interesting to people than intuitive findings
Therefore
Counterintuitive findings are more likely to be published in journals, books, and on the news
Therefore
We are more likely to believe the world is more counterintuitive than it really is
Surprising Facts
• psychologists measure the amount of time babies spend looking at something/someone to glimpse what they might be thinking
• Babies become upset if the person who is engaging with them suddenly becomes non-reactive and has a blank expression (still face experiments)
• 15 month olds can predict people's behaviors based on their false beliefs"psychologist Kristine Onishi and Renee Baillargeon showed that fifteen-month-olds can anticipate a person's behavior on the basis of his or her false belief. Babies watched as an adult looked at an object in one box, then observed the object move to another box while the adult's eyes were covered. Later on, they expected the adults to reach into the original box, not the box that actually contained the object." pg. 24
Psychopathic traits are over-represented among successful people //sim with NPD
Psychopaths are unable to recognize the expression of fear in other people's faces
One study found that People feel more empathy towards people they like than people they don't like
Little Girls are more likely to soothe than boys when someone they know gets injured
Psychologists have found that toddlers help adults who are struggling to pick up an object that is out of reach or to open a door while their arms are full
Children begin to spontaneously share in the second half of their first year of life, and the degree of sharing shoots up in the year that follows
Infants (6months olds) share only with friends and family and hardly at all with strangers
Before about the age of four, children show little spontaneous kindness toward strange adults.
Young children have a strong equality bias ie. A bias towards dividing up resources evenly among people, regardless of what others did to deserve it or not deserve it, even if it means throwing away extra resources so that NOONE gets more than others ie. Strong equality of outcome bias
There was an old man who was arrested and put in prison for 10 years for being the first person to stop applauding Stalin at a rally
In 2011 some citizens were imprisoned for not mourning Kim Jong-ils death in convincing enough fashion
Student's in economics classes play the Ultimatum game rationally; offering the lowest dollar amount to the other and accepting the lowest dollar amount from the other.
Picture of eyes on the wall or computer screen make people kinder (and less likely to steal or cheat) because they triggers thoughts of being watched.
"if you measure the rate of physical violence through the life span, it peaks at about age two."
Babies make distinctions between familiar and strange people almost immediately. Newborn babies prefer to look at their mother's face rather than at a stranger's face
Babies, like adults, look longer at what is surprising
Caucasian babies prefer to look at caucasian faces, Ethiopian babies prefer to look at Ethiopian faces, Chinese babies prefer to look at Chines faces
Babies raised in ethnically diverse environments show no preference on the basis of race
Laboratory studies find that adults automatically encode three pieces of information when we meet a new person: age, sex, and race.
During WW2 American Sentries at checkpoints in the Pacific would test to see if someone was American or Japanese by asking them to say the word "Lollapalooza". Since the Japanese have difficulty pronouncing the letter 'L', the Americans would open fire on anyone who couldn't pronounce it
Babies prefer to look at speakers whose accents match the ones they are used to hearing (usually their parents)
Jew make up only 1 to 2% of the total American population
In the Implicit Association Test a black face flashed on the screen (too fast to be consciously perceived) tends to trigger thoughts of aggression among white subjects and show a greater response in the amygdala. They are more likely to complete word fragments like 'HA_E' as 'Hate'
Incest is condemned in just about every culture on Earth
A stepfather who enters the father when the daughter is past puberty (as opposed to when she is a baby) is more likely to be sexually attracted to her later
A stepfather who enters the father when the daughter is past puberty (as opposed to when she is a baby) is more likely to kill her
Love and Lust shut down our disgust response
Young children are not able to grasp the concept of zero
People who read more fiction have somewhat higher social skills than people who prefer nonfiction
Religious Americans give more to charities on average than American Atheists
Unknown Terms
Moral Sense: the capacity to make certain types of moral judgements—to distinguish between good and bad, kindness and cruelty. 2)not the same as an impulse to do good and avoid doing evil things
Adaptationist: Someone who tends to think traits and behaviors are adaptations formed through natural selection as opposed to by-products of other adaptations (eg. Steven Pinker is not an ______ because he believes music evolved as a by-product rather than an adaptation)
Shadenfreude: the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another. It is a borrowed word from German, with no direct translation, that originated in the 18th century.
The Ultimatum Game: An experiment in psychology to test subjects rational decision making: The participant walks into the lab and is randomly chosen to either the 'proposer' or the 'recipient.' If she is chosen to be the proposer, she is given some sum of money, say $10, and has the option of giving any fraction of this money to the recipient. The recipient, in turn, has just two options—to accept the offer or to reject it. Importantly, if the offer is rejected, neither person keeps any money, and the proposer is aware of this rule before she makes her offer. The experiment is typically conducted anonymously, as a one-shot game—the proposer and the recipient are in different rooms, don't know who the other is, and will never encounter each other again."
Moral dumbfounding: when a moral act just feels wrong without being able to give any rational explanation for why it is wrong. Eg. Story about brother and sister having sex, choosing to never tell, using protection, and saying it strengthened their relationship. Was it wrong?
Notes