There was a fascinating story on CBS’s “60 Minutes” recently about research at the Yale University Infant Cognition Center. Using puppet shows, researchers at this baby lab have been able to create simple ways to find out what is going on in the minds of little ones, even at 5 months or 3 months of age. Among their findings - infants have a sense of morality and justice.
A 5-month-old child watches a puppet show.
There are three puppets on the stage. The one in the middle is struggling to open up a box with a toy inside.
A puppet in a yellow shirt helps the other one open the box. Curtain closes.
Scene two, same scenario.
The puppet in the middle is having a hard time opening the box with the toy. This time a puppet in a blue shirt comes and slams the boxshut. Yellow shirt equals nice behavior. Blue shirt equals mean behavior.
A researcher off ers the child a choice - two puppets: one with a yellow shirt and another with a blue shirt. Which do you want? Which do you like?
More than three fourths of the babies tested reached out for the nice puppet.
Study after study shows babies feel positively toward helpful creatures and negatively toward mean ones.
It goes further. When researchers showed a puppet behaving badly,stealing another puppet’s ball instead of rolling it back, 81 percent of the babies rewarded a third puppet who punished the ball thief by slamming the toy box shut when the naughty puppet struggled with it. It seems we have an innate sense of justice.
But this research is one of those good news/bad news stories. Good news: A sense of morality and justice seems innate in us.
But here’s the bad news: We seem hard-wired toward bias.
A baby is given an innocuous choice: graham crackers or Cheerios? Little Nate picks Cheerios. Then Nate watches two puppets.
The orange cat also likes Cheerios. The gray cat prefers graham crackers.
Not only does Nate prefer the orange cat, he also prefers puppets who are mean to the other, the gray cat. Almost 90 percent of the babies preferred puppetswho harmed the one who chose a different snack than the child chose.
Researcher Paul Bloom says, “We are predisposed to break the world up into diff erent human groups based on the most subtle and seemingly irrelevant cues, and that, to some extent, is the dark side of morality.”
It makes sense from the perspective of evolution.
We began as tribal beings, predisposed to identify with and connect with those who look like us, who act like us, who have the same tastes and habits as us. Tribal beings are predisposed to be wary of “the other,” who might be a threat.
“Othering” the Other is a very strong, fundamental human bias. Some might even call it our “original sin.”
Much of the work of socialization - much of the work of the church - is to teach us how to love ourneighbor as ourselves. The Great Commandment of Jesus is love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
When a lawyer asked for Jesus’ definition of neighbor, Jesus told him the story of the Good Samaritan about a foreigner who risked compassion and generosity for a stranger from another tribe, another culture, another religion.
Jesus himself traveled to foreigners and gave to them the same miracles of healing and feeding he offered to his own people.
Jesus went further, teaching his followers, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”
In Jesus, we see the category of “the other” shrink and disappear.
For us to love our neighbor as ourselves, we will have to challenge our basic human tendencies - our predisposition from infancy to be suspicious of the other and to beaggressive toward them.
The Baptismal Covenant of the Episcopal Church calls us “to respect the dignity of every human being.”
Whenever we fi nd ourselves reacting to another human being, we need to challenge ourselves: “Am I regarding that person as an ‘other?’” Our negative reaction can be something as subtle as Cheerios and graham crackers, Razorbacks and Longhorns, saved or lost. It can be the “otherness” of appearance, nationality, religion or point of view.
We are hardwired to be mean to those who we think are diff erent from us, but we are also inclined toward those who are kind.
We can follow Jesus’ Great Commandment. Love the other. Love your neighbor.
LOWELL GRISHAM IS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST WHO LIVES IN FAYETTEVILLE.
Opinion, Pages 11 on 12/16/2012