In my Dec. 16 column, I wrote about some troubling research with children documenting a human tendency toward bias.

Infants who choose Cheerios over graham crackers will actually reward a puppet who punishes another puppet who chose graham crackers over Cheerios. According to researchers, “We are predisposed to break the world up into different human groups based on the most subtle and seemingly irrelevant cues, and that, to some extent, is the dark side of morality.” Bias against the “other” seems to part of our human inheritance.

But that’s not the whole story. The Yale Infant Cognition Center has another set of experiments - with older children.

The experiments involve negotiations about tokens the children are told they can trade for prizes.

The youngest kids in the study are fi erce. They wantmore, and they want the other kids to get less. They will routinely choose to get fewer tokens for themselves if it means they will get more than the other kids. Brutally competitive.

But something happens about age 8. More and more, the children begin choosing the equal or fair option. They want everyone to have the same. Egalitarian.

By age 9 or 10, something remarkable happens. They will willingly choose to have less if it means another kid can have signifi cantly more.

Generosity.

The researchers tell us all of this is learned behavior.

Part of our job in churches,families, schools and society is to teach our children to curb their natural inclination toward selfish bias and to become generous and kind.

That’s also a good lesson for grown-ups.

In the Christian calendar, today is the Feast of the Epiphany. Churches around the globe are telling the story of the visit of the Magi to the child Jesus.

The Magi were astrologers who had seen a star at its rising and sought the newborn king. The scripture says they are from “the East,” which could be Persia (Iran), Babylon (Iraq) or Arabia (Saudi Arabia), all nations in this century’s news.

The scene of the holy family’s meeting with these exotic strangers from another culture and a dift erent religion is an inspiration for much art and literature. It is a scene of generosity and hospitality. The guests are welcomed and respected.

Their gifts are received with hospitality and grace.

Diverse religious traditionsencounter each other with respect, bless each other and depart to travel along their separate spiritual paths.

It is an icon of respectful religious pluralism.

From the very beginning, the story of Jesus brings outsiders inside, welcomes foreigners into intimacy and shines a beacon of friendship and respect that continues in the later stories of the adult Jesus’ generous interactions with outsiders, foreigners and the marginalized.

Jesus gave the same generous gifts of healing and feeding to those outside his religious and cultural tradition as he gave to his own people. Maybe the stories his parents told him of the visit from the mysterious foreigners shaped his own openness to the “other.”

Today’s researchers are fi nding evidence that cooperation, not competition, may be the most powerful infl uence for human evolutionary success. Harvard University’sProgram for Evolutionary Dynamics has been publishing some fascinating material challenging the theory that cooperative behavior arose solely from our desire to perpetuate the genes of close family members.

It seems successful humans have a widely adaptable impulse toward cooperation. Evidence is growing, saying that cooperation has an evolutionary advantage over competition. Evolutionary scientists have noted forgiveness is an important element for increasing the likelihood of survival.

One of the most powerful elements for thriving is the development of an earned reputation for being generous - being willing to cooperate with another despite not knowing him personally. According to Harvard researcher Martin Nowak, “Cooperation lies at the core of who we are.”

So we have similar messages from the Christianstory, from evolution and from childhood development. Our optimal strategy for thriving as human beings is the promotion of an intentional attitude of kindness, generosity and cooperation with the stranger or outsider.

How dift erent that message is from the common messages of fear, greed, defensiveness, suspicion, self-interest and competition. Religion, psychology and evolution tell us these latter strategies just don’t work.

What if all of our religion, politics and economics embraced the values of generosity, hospitality and cooperation rather than defensiveness, competition and self-interest?

Evolutionary scientists tell us we would be more successful. Psychologists tell us we would be happier. The spiritual traditions tell us we could become holy.

LOWELL GRISHAM IS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST WHO LIVES IN FAYETTEVILLE.

Opinion, Pages 11 on 01/06/2013