Feb 17 • 15:00 UTC 🇧🇷 Brazil Folha (PT)

'Surprising how much babies seem to understand about morality,' says researcher

A researcher discusses the surprising moral understanding displayed by babies even before their first birthday.

Psychologist Paul Bloom from Yale University reveals that infants appear to have an innate understanding of morality, showing the capacity to make judgments about behaviors and even accept punishments for perceived injustices. His research, conducted since the early 2000s at the Yale Mind and Development Lab, involves experiments with babies up to 18 months old and has illuminated the early signs of moral reasoning. Bloom's work, which he elaborates in his book 'What Makes Us Good or Evil', challenges the view that morality is solely a cultural construct, suggesting that it may have evolutionary roots. This insight could have significant implications for understanding human behavior and development, paving the way for a reassessment of moral education from a very early age, predicated on innate moral reasoning rather than learned behavior alone.

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