Babies currently demonstrate altruism
Babies currently demonstrate altruism
Many people have heard on a controversial study in the 1970s called "The Marshmallow Test". Many people may even have put a spongy marshmail in front of their son, tempting them to grab him with his little chubby hands and take him to his mouth. Supposedly, some children can delay gratification while others cannot. In a recent psychological study, researchers to the Institute for Learning and Cerebro Sciences at the University of Washington wanted to see if a child would not only delay gratification but would completely renounce food if someone else would like it. This study, published in the Scientific Reports newspaper, included around 100 19 month old babies. The researchers decided to use food to prove the idea of childhood altruism: a child, even when faced with one of the most basic needs of humanity (hunger), would still resist selfish impulses for someone?
For the study, the researchers established delicious fruits that probably looked beautiful edible jewels for a hungry baby. The researchers wanted to see if babies would give attractive food to a stranger without warning. A group of researchers simply dropped a piece of fruit on a tray, but gave no indication that they would like it (and this was the control group). Another group pretended to drop the fruit and reached it as if they wanted it (this was the test group). They treated this study with children who were not hungry and with hungry children (who would be more likely to take food for themselves). In both cases, the test group had very high results (more than 50% of children who were not hungry and 37% of hungry children). Other factors that the researchers recorded were if the child had brothers and the child’s cultural norms. In the past, having more brothers and growing in a community -centered culture has been correlated with more altruism.
The results of this study were surprising, especially knowing that babies could have easily taken food for themselves. However, the authors recognized the inconveniences, such as “the small size of the sample, the biased sample of the parents who enter the research laboratories and the convenience in the future of the video recordings of the sociocultural experiences of the babies inhome". In addition, studying babies’ motivations is difficult.
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