New Study Says Babies Can Be Mean! Mom, Is Yours?
Photo: Veer / The Bump
Do not! I repeat, do not! upset the baby!
A study from the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Infant Cognition found that babies have a bit of a mean streak when they meet people they perceive as different.
During the course of the experiment, babies were given a choice of snacks (either graham crackers or green beans). Then, researchers conducted a puppet show for the babies (aged 9 or 14 months old). The first puppet ate the same snack that the baby chose and the other puppet ate the other snack. Puppet 1 (who ate the same snack as baby), either acted indifferent, friendly or aggressively toward Puppet 2 (who ate the other snack).
From the puppet show, researchers found that when babies are given a choice of which puppet to play with following the puppet show, “almost all the infants at both ages preferred the character who harmed the dissimilar puppet over the character who helped him.” One of the researchers, Kiley Hamlin said, “The fact that infants show these social biases before they can even speak suggests that the biases aren’t solely the result of experiencing a divided social world, but are based in part on basic aspects of human social evaluation.”
While researchers were not able to peg the reason behind the babies’ choices, Hamlin believes, “Infants might experience something like schadenfreude at the suffering of an individual they dislike. Or perhaps they recognize the alliances that are implied by social interactions, identifying an ‘enemy of their enemy’ (i.e., the harmer of a dissimilar puppet) as their friend.”
One things for sure — don’t be the person to disagree with baby!
Have you ever seen your baby be mean?
Plus, more from The Bump:
The Knot Blog
The Nest Blog
“researchers were not able to peg the reason behind the babies’ choices”
Sometimes i have to damn these studies. Too many people don’t read to the last paragraph. By reading the headline and the last few lines, they wouldn’t jump to tthe conclusions that so many will witth this headline. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr ……………
Was there a control group in which there was no snack bias? I’m thinking maybe babies just like to watch puppets hit each other.
Maybe I misunderstood the study, but maybe the baby preferred the puppet that was eating the same snack because they shared that similarity. I think that we tend to gravitate towards people who have common interests. Maybe that social behavior starts that early?