Good vs. evil: is it innate? Or is it something we learn?

The debate rages: are we born knowing the difference between good and evil or do we develop our moral code from our parents, and society?  In other words, are babies truly a blank slate, or is morality innate?

Yale professor Paul Bloom, author of a new book called Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, maintains that humans are born with a hard-wired morality.  In research conducted with his wife, Karen Wynn, also a professor at Yale, Bloom demonstrated that babies as young as three months old can judge a person’s character. Explained Yale News: “Bloom demonstrates that, even before they can speak or walk, babies judge the goodness and badness of others’ actions; feel empathy and compassion; act to soothe those in distress; and have a rudimentary sense of justice.”

Some question Bloom’s findings, among them, Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of psychology at Cambridge University and author of The Science of Evil. Said Baron-Cohen, in a New York Times article:  “Bloom has found that infants as young as 3 months old reach for and prefer looking at a ‘helper’ rather than a ‘hinderer,’ which he interprets as evidence of moral sense, that babies are ‘drawn to the nice guy and repelled by the mean guy.’ He may be right, but he hasn’t proved innateness. Proving innateness requires much harder evidence — that the behavior has existed from Day 1, say, or that it has a clear genetic basis. Bloom presents no such evidence.”

Professor Marc Bekoff, an ecologist at the University of Colorado, would likely side with Bloom over Baron-Cohen. Author of Wild Justice, Bekoff maintains that morals are hard-wired not only in humans, but in all mammals. Further, he maintains that this innate moral code provides the social glue that allows aggressive and competitive animals to live together in groups. According to an article in The Telegraph: “[Bekoff] has compiled evidence from around the world that shows how different species of animals appear to have an innate sense of fairness, display empathy and help other animals that are in distress.”

Kent Keith, author of the Universal Moral Code, clearly is in the Bloom-Bekoff camp. On his web site (www.universalmoralcode.com), Keith explains: "People who regularly lie, cheat, steal, and murder make up a very small percentage of the world's population – perhaps only 5 or 6 percent. These people cause a lot of pain and tragedy, but they are a small minority. The most significant fact is that literally billions of people – the other 94 or 95 percent of the world's population – follow fundamental, universal moral principles on a daily basis.”

The central question remains: Do human beings begin life with a sense of morality?  And the more urgent question becomes: if all mammals automatically know right from wrong, what’s our role as parents and members of society? In other words, what steps should we take to advance and strengthen that code? 

Commented parent Lyz Lenz, on the parenting site Babble:

"Children know the world is deep and dark and bright and beautiful. We don't have to teach them that. Instead, we have to equip them to slay the monsters and hold fast to what is true and good."

Explained Professor Frans de Waal, primate behaviorist at Emory University (as quoted in The Telegraph article):

"I don't believe animals are moral in the sense we humans are – with a well developed and reasoned sense of right and wrong – rather that human morality incorporates a set of psychological tendencies and capacities such as empathy, reciprocity, a desire for cooperation and harmony that are older than our species. Human morality was not formed from scratch, but grew out of our primate psychology. Primate psychology has ancient roots, and I agree that other animals show many of the same tendencies and have an intense sociality."

Added Author Bloom, as quoted in the CNN piece:

“. . . if you realize kids come in a world with their own beliefs and judgments and propensities and expectations, it gives you more respect for them, and it also helps you parent them, helps you know how to make them into more moral people."

Bloom urges us to use our ability to reason to resolve moral dilemmas (e.g., slavery), and to use our imagination, compassion and capacity for rational thought to “transcend the primitive sense of morality that we’re born with,” according to Yale News.  

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