Posted on November 21, 2012

Born Good? Babies Help Unlock the Origins of Morality

CBS News, November 18, 2012

Studies of babies as young as 3 months old reveal a basic appreciation of justice and kindness, and also a tendency toward tribalism. As children grow older, they may become conditioned to act in contrary ways, but, as one researcher puts it, “When life is difficult, we regress to our younger selves. All this elaborate stuff we have on top disappears.”

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  • TheCogitator

    The babies sense of justice and appreciation of kindness was applauded. But when it came to babies preference for someone like themselves, that was seen as something that needed to be changed. If justice, kindness, and tribalism are natural to us, why are those damned fools pushing multicultural diversity on us?

    Multiculturalism, and diversity are nonsense. People need to pay attention to how we are wired up. Reject the fools who preach nonsense.

    • I shall use this spot to give the answer to my question, above (“What is the most important thing in existence?”)

      Clue: Without it, there is no existence. “IT” must exist first before anything else and if “IT” does’t exist there is no point in anything.

      The answer: You.

    • Indiana Guy

      Yes, but they say that when things get difficult, we revert to our hard wired programming. Race matters. When there is only enough food to feed five and there are 8, four of one group and four of another, then people will side with their own kind against the other kind. It is that basic. It is instinctive.

      • Herger

        Prison populations are another example of this hard wired programming. When it comes down to survival we stick together. The conditions seem to be getting right for this to happen in our general population.

    • FourFooted_Messiah

      This is just an extention of Newweek’s “Are babies prejudiced?” article, which only took white babies into account.

  • None

    There are four important points to take away from this (none of them are the intended ones…which are drivel).

    1. The main point of this clip. The reason it was made. Was to refer to babies as “creatures” as a subtle and powerful way to devalue and dehumanize them. In any normal interaction, such a thing would pull a “I beg your pardon” from all involved. Any normal parent might react with violence to such a slight. If you didn’t at least wince when they did this twice, YOU need to study up on brainwashing, re-read 1984 and do some serious thinking about the anti-white, obviously genocidal agenda underlying almost all media these days. Click on any TV to any channel, any time of the day, programming, news, commercial, whatever, and you will see a constant stream of it. If you can’t, you are in real trouble and have become desensitized to it. You have problems. If you did notice, you get bonus points if you picked up on the Rousseau reference (and realized it was quite a leap to include it) and figured out that this guys philosophy was sick, not of much real historical significance and the ONLY reason most educated people even know who he is, is that he was rammed down our throats in college as part of a sinister agenda to get us to adopt such ways of thinking. Considering babies as perfect idiots, as mentioned prominently and incongruously (if it is at odds with the supposed point of the clip why was it mentioned…think about it), is an idea that has born bitter fruit indeed.

    2. Why exactly is helpful vs interfering behavior, moral? Being helpful is a virtue in a slave. A vice in a cop, if you get my drift. Disturbing either the attempt to blur the issue or that those making such a study CAN’T COME UP WITH LEGITIMATE EXAMPLES OF WHAT IS MORAL OR IMMORAL to test. Before asking the question if babies know the difference, one might ask if the psychologists do. I maintain that they don’t. And no longer maintain the capacity to even know that.

    3. If you want to understand a far better and more useful explanation for their findings, read the fascinating book, “The Charisma Myth” by Olivia Fox Cabane. That book is an objective study of charisma and a useful breakdown of some very important observations of human interaction and how you can use that information to make things happen.

    One of the more interesting points is there is a strong, seemingly inborn, attraction to people who display a combination of three traits….power of some sort, the willingness to be helpful or benevolent to you, and presence (ie that the person values you enough to pay attention to you). Although helpful behavior is of dubious morality, depending on the context, it is probably an inborn instinct to be attracted to those people who are helpful. So, of course you would observe this outcome in such an experiment. I will go further that if you expand the experiment to test all three of these traits you will get a predictable outcome with children.

    Or you can buy the book and test these things out with adults…..cough.

    4. Nobody asks the obvious question of overwhelming importance. If you redo the experiment with groups of babies of different races, will the results be the same? I suspect I know the answer to that. However, it’s the type of experiment that is taboo for exactly the reason that answering it could discredit 300 to 500 years of attempted social uplift.

    Because if other races simply do not have an inborn instinct to value powerful, altruistic people, or be valued by them in return, the very underpinnings of civilization becomes a whites only phenomenon. Everything whites do outside our own societies becomes pointless…..even immoral.

    There is every reason to believe this is the case. Of course no one really knows. Simply asking the question is “racist”.

    • Indiana Guy

      well, we have all seen the video of how young blacks in daycare act. Their hardwiring seems to be a drive to hurt and degrade others, even at a very early age. They do not cooperate with others but instead take what they can from the weakest in their presence. Their morality is one that considers brutality good. “Helpfullness”, “charity”, “kindness” are not valued,l they are despised.

      • TheCogitator

        It would be interesting to see if black and white babies were different. I suspect the blacks would have been high on tribal, but they may have favored the puppet that was best at taking things from the other puppet. Rather than being drawn to kindness, they may have been repelled by it. If they are not as babies, they sure as hell get that way along the line.

        • Indiana Guy

          I came across a blog by a feeble DWL about his little girls observations about blacks. The little girl is in daycare and she was trying to tell her father that she does not like the black children, that they will just come up to her and grab things out of her hand and be abusive. This pathetic excuse for a man went on to ell her that she was wrong and that such thoughts were bad. In other words, he would not listen to his daughter telling him about the abuse she was suffering. My guess is that this is how many liberals are created. She no doubt, will have had great anger at her father for not listening to her and not protecting her. I believe many liberals become liberals out of such anger, and that they end up trying to “out liberal’ their parents. They want to do to their parents what their parents did to them, so they will become more liberal, to get a reaction from their parents, and then condemn their parents for being evil white people.

          • Lapland1249

            You have to try to reach this guy, for the sake of the daughter. Where’s the blog? Can you post comments? If so, you have to put up something that will get him to act even if that means framing it with liberal BS. This is a little kid who’s being hurt right now. At least you (or others) can try to influence this fool a little…

          • Angry White Woman

            Actually this little girl will see her father (the white male) as weak and feeble, unable to protect her from the more powerful blacks, so for self-preservation she will seek to join the “stronger” group, the blacks. Her father will have nobody but himself to blame when this daughter comes home at 17 with a mulatto baby, a “gangsta” attitude and spits on him (either figuratively or literally.)

          • Anon 12

            Even on The X Factor they had to play up a black single mother singer as being “taken in” by a White woman when she had no place to go and how much she loved that White woman. The audience and judges all ate it up, of course as such a “good’ thing for White women to do. This is where we are losing the battle. The message is loud and clear. See, blacks are just like we are and more Whites need to start taking in these black teens and “raise” them as their own……

          • FourFooted_Messiah

            On the other hand, teens rebel. It may be that the future crop of teenagers will see through their parents’ lies and begin fighting back, JUST to spite their parents’ ideals.

            One can only hope, anyway.

    • george00

      “If you redo the experiment with groups of babies of different races, will the results be the same?”

      Well they did say the results are universal so I’m assuming that means they did test nonwhite babies and the results were the same. All this report means is that deep down one race wants to punish people of other races. So why would anyone want a multicultural/multiracial society if you want a peaceful life.

  • Let me ask you all one simple question. One questions, from which the answer will enable you to deduce what life, and happiness is all about. Ready? I shall as the question in this post, but add the answer further down, tagged to somebody else’s post, so you have to think.

    Here is the question: What is the most important thing in all of existence?

    • Electromagnetic radiation?

    • NYB

      All living entities have a primal directive to survive and thrive. Competition is the way of nature and the universe, back to the beginning of time.

      Before there was man, war existed, waiting for us…

    • Myname

      #1 self preservation
      #2 reproduction
      #3 Beer

    • Indiana Guy

      #1 God
      #2 Doing what is right in the moment

    • “me”.

  • Luca

    Stupid study. For all they know the babies could have been choosing their favorite color or reaching to the right because they were right-handed. Babies are born with a basic personality that is shaped for the better or the worse by environment. Some babies lack the cerebral wiring to feel guilt or comapassion while others with those attributes are over-developed..

    • dd121

      I bet you believe the 15-20 point IQ gap between blacks and whites is about to be closed any day now. My God, ANYTHING could cause that.

      • Luca

        That’s caused by the cerebral wiring I was talking about.

  • Detroit_WASP

    I heard they HAD a black male baby in the study but he pulled out a Glock and robbed the puppets.

    Of course 60 Minutes had to edit that part out and hide the footage, the way they hid the Obama footage acknowledging he downplayed the role of Al Qaeda in the Benghazi attacks.

  • IstvanIN

    So white babies are “creatures”?

    • StillModerated

      Yeah! Created in the image of God.

      This comment is neither anti-atheist nor racist!

  • IstvanIN

    OMG they had a white girl with a mulatto baby!

    • White_Prime77

      They start out the multi-cultural conditioning at younger and younger ages…

      White Parents should home school their toddlers and not let them take part in these weirdo experiments where their children will be de-humanized as ‘creatures’.

  • ‘If you want to eradicate racism, you want to know to what extent are babies little bigots.’

    I started watching this with a skeptical but open mind. My gut feeling was that this was going to end up being about ‘curing racism’. My gut feeling was correct.

    Get ready for more intervention programs to catch children at earlier ages who show signs of being bigots and racists. Get ready for programs to identify and target racist white parents who teach their children to hate others.

  • E_Pluribus_Pluribus

    Baby studies are intriguing because they seem to bore down to the fundamentals of human existence. Although we aren’t like to have of baby studies of race differences any time soon, we are fortunate to have impressive studies of gender differences.

    Harald Eia is a brave, hippy-looking (which is probably why he got away with it) Norwegian comic-turned-journalist who produced a fascinating documentary “The Gender Equality Paradox” (Google if interested). Here are transcribed excerpts from the two baby studies Eia featured:

    EIA [to viewers while driving]: How early can you spot differences in interest between boys and girls? Most of us notice that boys and girls play with different things. Professor Trond Diseth at the National Hospital as studied this. He has developed a test to see if there are early gender differences. He works with children with deformed genitals. In the process of determining the gender, he uses a play test.

    DISETH: We’ve defined 10 different toys. Four feminine toys. Four toys were defined as masculine. And there are the so-called neutral toys. Then we videotaped it [picture showing an infant crawling amongst the toys]. We observe children touching the toys. We see clear differences between healthy girls and boys from the age of nine months. Boys choose masculine toys. Girls choose feminine toys.

    EIA [to viewers]: that boys and girls want different toys this early could be the result of already being influenced by gender roles. Diseth doesn’t believe this is so.

    DISETH: Children are born with a clear biological disposition as far as gender identity and behavior. And then the environment expectations and values around us either enhance or turn that down.

    =====

    EIA [to viewers while driving to the next site]: …But are there even earlier signs of gender differences? Simon Baron-Cohen is a British professor of psychiatry. He has done some groundbreaking experiments on newborn children [shows page entitled “sex differences in neonatal social perception”] . . . Simon Baron-Cohen is an expert on autism. Coincidentally he has discovered important differences in gender from the very birth . . . he’s the cousin of Sasha Baron-Cohen. He plays Borat and Ali G. and Bruno. They’re talented family, both good at comedy and science.

    * * *

    EIA [to viewers after Simon Baron-Cohen introduces himself]: I ask him to tell me about the experiment he did with newborn babies.

    Baron-Cohen: We looked at babies who were one day old . . . We presented them either with a mechanical object or a face to look at, and filmed how long does the baby look at these two objects. And we find that more boys look longer at the mechanical object and more girls looked longer at the face, even on the first day of life. So this is before toys have been introduced or various cultural biases or prejudices have been introduced.

    EIA [to viewers]: Baron-Cohen’s findings suggest that these differences are created before the children of born in the womb.

    BARON-COHEN: What we know is that boys and girls are producing different amounts of hormones, but particularly testosterone. The boys are producing twice as much testosterone as girls. This hormone testosterone influences the way the brain develops.

    EIA [to viewers]: How does he know that it’s the testosterone level that creates this?

    BARON-COHEN: We’ve measured the testosterone when the baby is in the womb and we’ve waited until the child is born and we’ve looked at their behavior. What we found is that the higher the child’s testosterone prenatally the slower they are to develop language when they’re a small child and the less eye contact they make — again at the age of one or two years old. So more testosterone is associated with slower language development and slower social development.

    EIA [to viewers]: So many differences are the result of this dissimilar testosterone levels. But what happens when the fetus of a girl receives too much testosterone?

    BARON-COHEN: It’s a traumatic condition where you produce too much testosterone. And girls with this condition show a very masculine pattern of toy preferences.

    EIA [to viewers as he writes in a notebook]: The testosterone levels give us early different interests and qualities. But does the effect last?

    BARON-COHEN: We followed these children, and now they are about eight years old. And so we’re interested to see how they’re turning out. What we find is as they get older, the children that had higher testosterone have more difficulties with empathy, with recognizing other people’s emotions or taking somebody else’s perspective. They also have a much stronger interest in systems, in understanding how things work. So even if you ignore what sex somebody is and just look at their hormone levels, you can predict their pattern of interests.

  • Mother of baby helped the baby the babys whole entire life, ofcourse the baby will pick the helping bunny…

  • IstvanIN

    There is so much proof that so many of our inborn traits, talents, natural intelligence and abilities, emotional dispositions, and so on that only a fool could believe in a blank slate theory. Of course, depending on one’s agenda, people will claim that some traits are due to some sort of social conditioning because they do not like a certain group difference. Sex differences are a product of social conditioning if you are a feminist. Intelligence differences are due to white racism if you are a liberal. Homosexuals are recruited if you are a fundamentalist preacher. Conversely athletic differences are because blacks are naturally better, according to blacks. Different groups seem to favor committing different types of crimes and at different rates. And I am just talking group differences here.

    There is a greater differentiation among members of the same group. Girls, in general , are probably not as naturally good at math as boys, although some are. There are very bright, non-violent blacks, just not as high a percentage as among whites. If we accepted reality and allowed individuals to develop their innate talents and abilities, or at least the positive ones, society would be a lot more productive and happy.

    • Yes, lots of evidence about inborn traits.

      The problem is that the do-gooders (progressive-liberals) have subjectively decided which inborn traits are good and bad and they seek new ways to manipulate nature and society.

      Left to her own devices, nature would sort this all out. Unfortunately, ‘progressives’ believe they know better than nature and society suffers for their unwarranted interventions.

  • A Swain

    Notice that the majority of the infants subjected to this nafarious so-called research are White and then note the verbal references made throughout the vid, ie, blob, creature, devils, bigots and a comparison with rats in particular!!!! Non-White infants were only fleetingly filmed and mainly only in the middle of the video whilst carefully placing the emphasis on Whites as being the race which is allegedly inherently racist and bad.

    What’s more alarming is the suggestion that such moral awareness in relation to right and wrong and perceived ‘justice’ as well as racial preferences for one’s own race, needs eliminating from the human psychic which is obviously directed at the White human psychic.

    It’s these insidious Frankfurt School-indoctrinated meddlers who need eliminating from society and I’m sure there are sufficient sane scientists across the world who can easily devise a method of detecting such anti-human thinkers with a view to getting them permanently sectioned in the future for the sake of humanity.

  • purestocles

    The conclusion drawn from the last experiment was unwarranted. Recall, as the child got older their tendency to choose “green” when that gave the invisible “other” more chips than they themselves received. The authors chose to interpret this as evidence of the older children having been exposed to the civilizing effects of schooling etc. and conveyed a sort of “Thank Goodness!” attitude to this and “Where would we all be without the civilizing effect of US?” (meaning we adults who intervene to the benefit of all mankind).

    But it may well be that the older children chose to gift tokens to an unknown “other” because they understood the value of friendship and helpfulness in getting what they want in life and that they didn’t learn this from adults, but from interaction with their peers–a result more consistent with the earlier part of the presentation.

    • FourFooted_Messiah

      Yes, and there is the “pay it forward” theory, in which you might help me, but I can’t help you …. but I might be able to help someone in a similar situation in the future. I used to have to hitch-hike a lot, mixed in with driving long distances as a form of work (delivering used cars to dealers.) I have been well treated as a hitch-hiker, and so, when I have access to a car, always pick up hitch-hikers and help them in whatever way I can. One of the kinder things my otherwise horrid ex did was pick up a guy who we thought was some Indian on his way to or from a nearby reserve. It turned out to be a Mexican who only spoke Spanish. But he was in only a short-sleeved shirt, in the Canadian Rockies, in March, and seemed to indicate he was cold (my Spanish is lacking, but it was easy to understand that much.) To his credit, my ex gave him his own sweater to wear, and we also gave him a couple of sandwiches I had made for the trip, a can of Coke, and a few dollars to spend at the gas station we dropped him off at. Yes, I know he was an illegal who snuck across the border at Yahk, BC, but really, the only right thing to do was to see only a poorly-equpped human in trouble. I can only assume that someone at the gas station might have called Immigration – even if not, he would have found that Okanagan fruit-picking is now locked up by Sikhs, and there’s no jobs for either Canadians or Mexicans there, anyway.

      HOWEVER – the pay it forward theory fails when it comes to helping third world countries. They will never help us back, nor will they help even other countries with their own kind. Look at how Pakistan begs from us in a disaster, rather than from Saudi Arabia!

      I don’t mind helping individuals in dire straits. as I, as an individual, have been helped in the past .. and even the present, if I wish to be honest. I like to help, as it does ease some of my personal guilt anxiety. But I won’t give to “countries”. because those countries will never do anything for anyone else, ever. I would rather help wildlife, simply because I enjoy knowing it still exists, which is all the payback I need from that.

    • FourFooted_Messiah

      Yes, and there is the “pay it forward” theory, in which you might help me, but I can’t help you …. but I might be able to help someone in a similar situation in the future. I used to have to hitch-hike a lot, mixed in with driving long distances as a form of work (delivering used cars to dealers.) I have been well treated as a hitch-hiker, and so, when I have access to a car, always pick up hitch-hikers and help them in whatever way I can. One of the kinder things my otherwise horrid ex did was pick up a guy who we thought was some Indian on his way to or from a nearby reserve. It turned out to be a Mexican who only spoke Spanish. But he was in only a short-sleeved shirt, in the Canadian Rockies, in March, and seemed to indicate he was cold (my Spanish is lacking, but it was easy to understand that much.) To his credit, my ex gave him his own sweater to wear, and we also gave him a couple of sandwiches I had made for the trip, a can of Coke, and a few dollars to spend at the gas station we dropped him off at. Yes, I know he was an illegal who snuck across the border at Yahk, BC, but really, the only right thing to do was to see only a poorly-equpped human in trouble. I can only assume that someone at the gas station might have called Immigration – even if not, he would have found that Okanagan fruit-picking is now locked up by Sikhs, and there’s no jobs for either Canadians or Mexicans there, anyway. So yeah, I feel a bit sorry for the guy. At the very least, I hope he found his way back to Mexico safely, where he would be better offf than here.

      HOWEVER – the pay it forward theory fails when it comes to helping third world countries. They will never help us back, nor will they help even other countries with their own kind. Look at how Pakistan begs from us in a disaster, rather than from Saudi Arabia!

      I don’t mind helping individuals in dire straits. as I, as an individual, have been helped in the past .. and even the present, if I wish to be honest. I like to help, as it does ease some of my personal guilt anxiety. But I won’t give to “countries”. because those countries will never do anything for anyone else, ever. I would rather help wildlife, simply because I enjoy knowing it still exists, which is all the payback I need from that.

  • William Allingham

    altruism to strangers is a misfiring of our genes, that evolved when we were surrounded only by people like ourselves.

    • FourFooted_Messiah

      Altruism – which is never pure – is a good survival strategy. I scratch your back, because then I can ask you later to scratch mine, and expect you to do so willingly. It’s actually common amongst social species – humans are not the only ones to practice it.

      However, altruism is usually reserved for creatures like your own self, or even those directly related to you (siblings, aunts/uncles, cousins, those of the same hive, pack, etc.) White humans seem to be the only ones to take this to extremes, however, being altruistic towards people who would just as soon slit their throats than look at them. In non-humans, it only seems to occur amongst domesticated animals (stories of wolf-children notwithstanding, but those are only plausible because of known lupine social behaviour, and probably have more to do with autistic kids being left in the woods to die by their parents than with wolves being altruistic towards humans.)

  • Phil

    The lesson: Resist the conditioning and let your White racist gene save you and yours from genocide via miscegenation and other evils.

  • At my daughter’s school, teachers noticed she wasn’t willingly associating with other races and preferred to stick with white kids. She was pulled aside and told that was racist and was coerced into attending a club where she was essentially forced to ‘become friends’ with people from other races.
    My child no longer has any choice over her friends are or should be – the government and the school board are now in control of that… and if you have any objections – guess what you are?

    • White_Prime77

      School today must be total hell for youngsters!

      Is there anyway you can home-school your daughter?

      Myself I am glad I was able to go to all White schools in the ’80s and ’90s. (there were a few tokens, but could be counted on one finger)

      • I am

        “White_Prime77 – School today must be total hell for youngsters!”

        White youngsters,

        It must be wonderful to be a minority in today’s school. Every excuse has already been made to make up for their short comings. They not only don’t have to do equal work, they also don’t have to go through the effort of even coming up with their own excuses.

      • Thanks for your reply and your concern. My daughter can’t move school because the other schools in the area are even more ‘diverse’ that the one she is at, and home schooling is impossible.
        I really don’t know how she manages to cope so well under such wretched circumstances. Luckily she only has 2 years of school left.

        • White_Prime77

          Only 2 years left? That is good!

          Don’t let her go to some psycho-liberal University when she gets older!!! These places (I work at one) are sometimes even more insanely PC than the K-12 system!!!!

  • Jim G

    This Kenneth Clark style enterprise is about as scientific as
    sticking pins in a voodoo doll.

    One detail that stands out is that the older children are influenced
    by the attitude of the supposedly non-biased authority figure. The women overseers give off subtle clues approving
    or disapproving of the child’s selection.

    The younger children may not be as perceptive as their older brother and sisters. This means that the indoctrination efforts directed
    at younger children should be heavy handed, but older children require a lighter
    touch.

  • Anon 12

    Heaven forbid Whites become a TRIBE again as they were created for! The infiltrators into OUR race have twisted our people into a bunch of cowards and wimps. Take a stand White men and women! Know your enemy and fight them with their own tactics.

  • FourFooted_Messiah

    Well, of course. Evolution theory demands that an “us’ and “them” mentaility be manifest early, so that one member of one subspecies does not mate with a member of another subspecies, thus reducing genetic diversity.

    Hybrids are only meant to be a last-ditch resort by a dying breed to inject its genes into a related gene pool, as a way to promulgate key genes into the other breed from the dying breed.

    Are whites a dying race? I guess so, if hybridization is so encouraged! :/