Babies can recognize kindness just days after birth

Even before babies can smile, they already show signs of recognizing kindness. A recent study reveals that five-day-old newborn can distinguish between helpful and harmful social behavior. They show a preference for the helpful.

“These babies have almost no experience with the social world, and yet they’re already picking up on friendly versus unfriendly interactions, on helping versus hindering,” said Dr. Kiley Hamlin of the University of British Columbia. “That could be telling us something really important about human nature.”

The study, co-led by Dr. Alessandra Geraci from the University of Catania, examined how newborns responded to basic social actions like approaching or helping. Their co-authors were Luca Surian and Lucia Gabriella Tina.

Watching animated balls with meaning

Researchers showed the newborns looping animations. In one, a ball (Agent A) tried climbing a hill. In one version, a second ball (Agent B) helped push it up and in another, it shoved Agent A down. Infants looked longer at the helping scene.

Another video set showed one ball moving toward another (approach) versus away (avoidance). Again, babies spent more time watching the friendly interaction.

These videos used faceless gray balls. The movements were smooth, repeated, and high contrast. This design suited newborn vision. Control videos had similar motions but lacked social meaning. Babies didn’t show a preference there.

Babies chose kindness

What makes this finding powerful is the age of the infants. Just five days old, they have minimal life experience. The research team ruled out learned behavior by designing scenarios with novel agents and controlled movements. Babies preferred prosocial acts only when the scenes implied social intent.

In Experiment 1, infants watched approach versus avoidance. They preferred approach, but only when both agents appeared socially animated. In the non-social version, where one agent was inert, babies showed no preference.

In Experiment 2, the team tested helping versus hindering on a hill. Babies again looked longer at the helping scene, but only under the social condition.

In Experiment 3, the results replicated. Seventy-eight percent of newborns looked longer at helping interactions. The researchers concluded that newborns show a spontaneous preference for simple forms of prosocial behavior.

Newborns responded to intent

Newborns have already shown a preference for faces, eye contact, and crying sounds, but this study goes further.

The research suggests that newborns can process types of social interaction by recognizing when one agent acts supportively toward another.

The study rules out simple motion as the cause. Babies didn’t respond similarly to random or one-sided movements. They responded to interaction. They noticed when one character acted for or against another.

Noticing basic social cues

The researchers caution that this may not mean newborns have a moral sense. Their preferences might reflect social alignment rather than moral judgment.

For instance, a baby might like characters that move toward others, not because they’re “good,” but because they seem socially engaged.

Still, this spontaneous attention to friendly interactions supports the idea that key elements of our moral sense begin early. Not learned, nor taught. It’s present from the start.

Babies spots kindness early

How do newborns, so inexperienced, process social cues? The answer may lie in the visual brain. Recent neuroscience suggests that parts of the visual system are tuned to social interaction.

Regions like the extrastriate body area (EBA) and the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) respond to actions like helping or chasing.

These brain systems might allow infants to quickly pick up on social meaning from movement alone. They don’t need language. They don’t even need faces.

Humans may be born kind

“These findings go significantly beyond past work in lending support to claims that humans are in possession of unlearned mechanisms for detecting and evaluating key features of the sociomoral world,” the authors write.

While it’s still unclear whether these early social preferences are truly moral, the results provide a strong starting point. Even in the first days of life, babies aren’t passive. They’re watching. And they’re rooting for the good guys.

The study is published in the journal Nature Communications.

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