It turns out that everything has a price for each of us - even for babies. Babies around the age of one year are more likely to accept fewer gifts or treats from the Good Samaritan than they would deal with a villain, even if he offered them more. However, children are far more likely to be willing to deal with a bad person when their promises significantly outweigh those of a virtuous person, according to a new study published in the journal Cognition.
“I would call this research a 'deal with the devil,'” said psychology graduate student Arber Tasimi, who studied the issue with Yale University psychologist Karen Wynn.
The experiment these scientists devised was quite simple: when there is a choice between fewer and more gifts, what will children and babies choose? Unsurprisingly, they almost always choose whichever is larger. But the researchers wanted to know if it really mattered who offered them the goodies - the good or the bad.
In one experiment, five-year-old and eight-year-old children were presented with two characters - one described as a bad boy and the other as a good one. The children were then told that the bad boy offered them more stickers (2, 4, 8, or 16) than the good boy who offered just one sticker. When the difference between the sentences was small, most children were willing to give up more stickers and agreed to deal with a good child. But when the number of stickers increased to 16, most of the children were ready to “sell out” to a bad boy.
It turns out that even 12-month-old and 13-month-old babies face a similar moral dilemma. In an experiment, Tashimi and Winn showed babies a puppet show with a character trying unsuccessfully to open a transparent toy box. At the next attempt, one doll helped open the drawer, but the other slammed it shut. Subsequently, the bad character offered the children two crackers, and the good one only one cracker. Remarkably, the researchers say, more than 80 percent of babies took a single cracker from a good puppet hero. But when the bad character increased his offer to eight crackers, the kids showed a greater willingness to deal with him.
“When I talk about these findings, people often joke that young children are corrupt natures, but I think it's not that cynical,” Tasimi said. “Even at an early age, we are willing to spend on personal expenses in order to avoid communication with offenders in favor of well-wishers.”
What about those members who have turned down any handout from the bad guys?
“I think exciting prospects for further research will include examining how individual differences, even in the first months of life, affect our judgments about good and bad, right and wrong,” he said.
Promotional video:
Sergey Lukavsky
