Babies care
You think babies are just selfish slugs? Think again. According to researcher Paul Bloom (the article is long, but worth reading in its entirety), they have a capacity for empathy, however rudimentary:
Human babies, notably, cry more to the cries of other babies than to tape recordings of their own crying, suggesting that they are responding to their awareness of someone else’s pain, not merely to a certain pitch of sound. Babies also seem to want to assuage the pain of others: once they have enough physical competence (starting at about 1 year old), they soothe others in distress by stroking and touching or by handing over a bottle or toy. There are individual differences, to be sure, in the intensity of response: some babies are great soothers; others don’t care as much. But the basic impulse seems common to all…
Some recent studies have explored the existence of behavior in toddlers that is “altruistic” in an even stronger sense ”” like when they give up their time and energy to help a stranger accomplish a difficult task.
I recall noticing some of this in my own son when he was about ten months old. We were visiting an acquaintance and her baby of the same age, and all four of us were sitting on their gravel driveway (why, I haven’t a clue). When her baby put a stone in his mouth against orders, she took it out and then slapped him. Her baby didn’t even blink; apparently he was used to such treatment.
I didn’t think hitting a ten-month-old was appropriate, but while I was mulling over whether to say something about it or not, my son was having the strongest reaction of all—you would have thought he’d been the one who’d been hit. He immediately let out a shriek of pain and began to cry as though his heart was breaking at the cruelty of it all.
The other mother seemed surprised. “My, isn’t he the sensitive one!” she said, and it was not a sign of approval. But my son actually was not overly sensitive; he was just unused to seeing mothers hit their babies, and although there’s no way to know, I believe it outraged him.
According to Bloom, it’s a possibility. With babies, nice guys don’t finish last:
We found that, given a choice, infants prefer a helpful character to a neutral one; and prefer a neutral character to one who hinders. This finding indicates that both inclinations are at work ”” babies are drawn to the nice guy and repelled by the mean guy. Again, these results were not subtle; babies almost always showed this pattern of response.
Even more interesting, perhaps, is the following:
When the target of the action was itself a good guy, babies preferred the puppet who was nice to it. This alone wasn’t very surprising, given that the other studies found an overall preference among babies for those who act nicely. What was more interesting was what happened when they watched the bad guy being rewarded or punished. Here they chose the punisher. Despite their overall preference for good actors over bad, then, babies are drawn to bad actors when those actors are punishing bad behavior.
The only really surprising thing about this is how early in life these reactions are exhibited. Anyone who observes children knows that—except for sociopaths and other character-disorded children—they may not be excessively moral, but they do expect the universe to be a place where justice reigns. In fact, quite a bit of the emotional life of abused children involves invoking order and justice in a world that seems otherwise devoid of it. Abused children often choose justice over the notion of chaos/injustice, preferring to believe themselves at fault and deserving of the mistreatment they get, rather than accepting that the world is often an unjust place in which the blameless are punished without cause by those in power.
[NOTE: The above essay made me think of a passage from Vikram Seth’s 1986 novel The Golden Gate. This astounding tour de force was written entirely in verse—specifically, the Pushkin-esque sonnet form having the unusual rhyme scheme ababccddeffegg.
And when I say “entirely” I mean entirely, including the table of contents, the acknowledgments, and the author’s bio, the last of which begins:
The author, Vikram Seth, directed
By Anne Freegood, his editor,
To draft a vita, has selected
The following salient facts for her:
In ’52, born in Calcutta.
8 lb. 1 oz. Was heard to utter
First words (“cat,” “mat”) at age of three…
I highly recommend The Golden Gate, which is dated in some of its themes but still remarkable in its unique achievement, and genuinely moving in many of its 590 stanzas. But here’s the aforementioned one about babies; obviously, Seth had not read Bloom’s research (although we can hardly blame him, since it had yet been done at the time Seth wrote this):
How ugly babies are! How heedless
Of all else than their bulging selves—
Like sumo wrestlers plush with needless
Kneadable flesh—like mutant elves,
Plump and vindictively nocturnal,
With lungs determined and infernal
(A pity that the blubbering blobs
Come unequipped with volume knobs),
And so intrinsically conservative,
A change of breast will make them squall
With no restraint or qualm at all.
Some think them cuddly, cute, and curvative.
Keep them, I say. Good luck to you;
No doubt you used to be one too.]
When my son was around two, he saw one of his cousins get spanked. He had never been hit, nor seen anyone be hit. He cried harder than the one who had been spanked.
Years later, he’s very empathetic. Although he’s one of the “in crowd”, he says it’s his job to protect another boy in the class who is often picked on. I’d like to take credit, but I know he was born that way.
I suspect that women in large families who had been around lots of children acquired a kind of wisdom about them that our modern day research is beginning to catch up with. Of course, when it gets put into child-rearing books, the appropriate subconscious responses they would have had to a child’s behaviour will be put into an unresponsive to-do list. I had lots of aunts and lots more cousins. They former were incredible without input from Betty Friedan or Gloria Steinem.
There may be a missing piece here, learned from children with attachment disorders due to abandonment or neglect in infancy, such as in the infant wards of the Romanian orphanages (if you haven’t been, you can’t imagine).
You can get all involved in the studying up on cortisol levels and the biology, but the short form is that there is an either-or aspect to attachment and brain development at any given moment. If one has a decent, supportive environment, the parts of the brain that control trust, delaying gratification, and object constancy develop – the civilised brain, the socialised brain. When the environment is not interactive or supportive, only the more primitive parts of the brain move forward in development. No child has an unbroken continuity of support, of course. Nor should they, being born into an imperfect world.
But there is a continuum of how much of this type of emotionally advanced brain-development takes place in children. Some will have more primitive brains and never fully grasp altruism. I am going to guess that children way down that scale were not included in this study. They don’t seem to be.
Babies are not blank slates, they have a lot of stuff preloaded that can potentially blossom if things go reasonably well. If things don’t go reasonably well, if critical periods are missed, catching up or patching up is difficult.
This has dramatic political implications (and may explain something about liberals). There are societies where a great many children do not receive what we would call the proper affection, and whole societies that remain in primitive-brain mode. (I am talking about emotion, not intellect here.)
To the elite liberal mind, if everyone would just be nice – if everyone would just be like them – the world would be a better place. That is partly true. If everyone had grown up with their support systems and encouragement, they could have been as gentle and war-avoidant. And to give liberals credit, sometimes expecting the highest out of others does actually help make it happen. It does work at the margins, and being inspired helps us all to be a little better.
The great flaw in all this is that we have enemies who are fully in primitive-brain cultures, who will not be raised to requisite levels of kindness and empathy no matter how much outreach, generosity, and kindness they are shown. It is not that they are inherently inferior – their brains could have developed the same way as those more gently raised.
But they didn’t and they aren’t. Failing to recognise that has let to negotiating with people for whom negotiating is only one more weapon, not an invitation to alliance or rapproachment.
“Verily I say unto you, Except ye …become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Jesus said, “Suffer little children, …for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
Note: I believe Jesus is referring to the childlike qualities of innocence, trust and empathy that researcher Bloom confirms.
I do not mean to imply that liberals are not stuck in a form of arrested emotional development, in which the eternal cry of the child, “that’s not fair!” is liberal’s primary motivation.
The left, which uses liberal protest against life’s essential (and necessary) unfairness is all about the acquisition of power, by whatever means necessary.
They tell mothers to talk to their babies in the womb. What if those “fetuses” also have empathy? What if they suffer?
I suspect that women in large families who had been around lots of children acquired a kind of wisdom about them that our modern day research is beginning to catch up with.
and finding out that most of it contradicts Marx, and turns out gives logical explanations to cultural behaviors!!!!!!!!!!
they didnt have to know why, to learn over a long time trends to exploit… its what life does to live and be fruitful… so culture was a way to maintain the behaviors that were learned to advantage and fix them long enough so that they can be incorporated into our DNA.. (as those that practiced better behaviors did better, and so had more kids, and so embedded the practice)
mind gives bodies time to maintain a condition long enough for genetics to incorporate it.
it makes such trends accessible to the investigative and storage medium called genes… (actually a lot more than genes, but i am trying to keep things short and now not as wide in information)
this is where culture is important and has no such idea to it that has any reference to the power people pretending to be scientists by staking out claims and so by doing, becoming experts in things not yet proven
which is why they crow loud if they wer accidently right, and work diligently if they were wrong and hide or suppress it…. the former seems to confirm, the later PROVES pretended competency.
[and so all the life advice based on any of the false ideas, is HARMFUL… (ergo feminism being so harmful as its the dominant one pushing a lot of stuff that didnt pan out. like women emotionally the same… like hormones not being in control… that children do have separate sexualities not created by society… that women do not provide like men as they have too many needs for the provider role (and an unwillingness to share acquired needs as freely). and on and on… )]
culture has to have a reason, as does religion, or else we wouldnt have it, and since progressives dont like it and want to regress… one can say that it created and facilitated the ability for the common man to throw off the shackles of primitive mans power seekers.
that if one takes a step back… one can see a flow from slavery under a few, to independence from needing them, and self sufficiency…
they are the throwbacks, and the nice people who cooperate and don’t need them… are the meek that would inherit the earth…
A novel. Completely in rhyme. Recommended.
Typical.
Progressive breakdown of . . . us!
Ignore the babies.
Kill the babies.
Be the baby.
I’m always amazed when new things are discovered about babies. I remember a time when infants were not given pain medications because doctors were convinced that their undeveloped nervous systems were not sophisticated enough to feel pain. The ignorance of adults often passes understanding.
The Golden Gate is coruscatingly brilliant.
My children both showed empathy early. Yeah, they were brighter than average, so that phase of mental development was bound to advance, too. However, I think that we just watched more closely than most people do, following our family’s parenting philosophy that, “If you aren’t obsessive, you’ve missed the whole point.”
Empathetic children are good receivers of comfort, too. As a pedi nurse, I am sort of locally famous for being able to comfort even crack babies, so I know pretty much the whole range of receptivity to comfort. It is very clear that the baby who, for example, cries for other people’s distress, is much more easily soothed on my chest and very comforting belly.
This would also be as good a place as any to remark on something that I’ll bet Assistant and several other regulars here also know: It is just about the grandest thing in the world to see your children grow into people you don’t merely love, just because they are your offspring, but people you admire?
Michael – “If you aren’t obsessive, you’ve missed the whole point.” Amen and amen. The natural failings of fallen humanity and the natural friction of reality mean that you have to have a touch of the fanatic about you to do something well. But of course, that carries its own pressures and problems for the children…
I regret how difficult it is to reacquire that fanaticism for our fifth son, a nephew we inherited a year ago. He deserves the same as the others got, but I give in to weariness too often. We front-loaded our energy to an extreme degree with our first two (which is not unusual). Then we geared up again when they were just about grown to bring in two from Romania. We were able to pour in energy then as well, and now they are grown. I am having trouble doing this a fifth time. And yet it is reality – it is required. So the energy must be found somewhere. I have enormous gratitude to the first four sons, who have all stepped up to be a support to the new one, each in his own way.
Mike Mc. Says:
May 12th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
They tell mothers to talk to their babies in the womb. What if those “fetuses” also have empathy? What if they suffer?
*thinks of her baby, just before birth, reacting to the stresses of an inadequate mother*
Waddaya mean, “what if”? Seems to me that babies, as soon as they figure out there IS someone else out there, identify themselves with the someone else. Maybe not 100%, but some.
I think it’s an error to think children are innocent little darlings — they do have the devil in them in many ways. But there are some notions which are woefully incorrect, but very popular.
For example, the notion that women are, as nurturers, inherently against war.
Putting the lie to that are two things:
1) The Lysistrata meme — this event is so notable not because of what it says, but, more critically, of how truly rare it is in human experience. Women simply DON’T make a serious effort to stop wars “created by men”, because, when their men win, they win.
2) The “baby boom” which follows in the wake of every war’s onset — 9 months after a war starts, there are a lot of babies being born. Trust me, there is NO WAY better to tell a man “You’re doing the right thing” than to have sex with him. Men are just wired that way. So women are affirming the choice of war by doing exactly the thing which men recognize most inherently as an “Attaboy!”.
The other chief notion which is an obvious lie is that humans are no different from any other animal. Humans feel empathy to a degree that other animals do not even approximate. We even empathize with other creatures, seeing a bit of ourselves in them. Other animals do not generally do this. While your pet dog no doubt is sensitive to your feelings, and will act appropriate to your mood, wild animals do no such thing.
A chief example of the attraction we have to the young of many other creatures — they’re “cute”, and so forth. Wild animals of other species are not thus enamored with the young of other species — they either see them as easy prey (for carnivores) or they see them as competition for resources (herbivores). In both cases, the young will be killed, not fawned over and treated well.
Much as the Lysistrata meme — the “Lucan” or “Mowgli” meme is notable, not for whatever true events it may have reflected, but for the rarity of such events in human experience.
Empathy is not just stronger in humans — there’s a difference that lends to a difference in kind, not just magnitude.