Babies Prefer Nice Toys to Mean Ones

picture from nature.com

Babies less than a year old would rather play with kind puppets than nasty ones, according to this week’s issue of the journal Nature. The infants were shown a puppet show where a googly-eyed wooden block struggled to roll up a steep hill. The struggling puppet was either given a helpful push by a nice puppet, or shoved back down the hill by a mean puppet.

After the show, the babies could choose to play with the helpful puppet or the hindering puppet. Almost all babies reached for the helpful puppet. In experiments where the puppets were simply wooden blocks without eyes, the babies’ preferences were less pronounced.

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