[babies gravitate toward good samaritans]
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In the news: Babies are good judge of character
A study by Yale University in the journal Nature says that 6-10 month olds are a better judge of character than once thought. Not only can babies pick out a good Samaritan, they identify with them. Babies were presented with a diorama-like display using shapes to represent people, some shapes acting as helpers while other shapes acted as hinderers (for example, a triangle might help a square up a hill, with the square acting elated once it reached the top) The babies were then asked to pick a toy---either a helper or hinderer shape----and amazingly 100% of 6 month olds and 87.5% of 10 month olds chose the helper---even when the shapes and their roles were swapped!
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Kiley Hamlin, lead author of the study, remarked, "They can figure this kind of stuff out without people explicitly teaching what's nice and not nice and who's nice and who's not nice." And while other research has suggested that babies gravitate to attractive people, this study shows their judgment to be much more complex