[Source: Science Daily]

Researchers found that preverbal infants can make and act on moral judgments about antisocial behavior in a third party. Using a new cognitive paradigm with gaze tracking, researchers were able to show that 8-month-old infants can engage in third-party punishment. This indicates that humans may have acquired morality through evolution, and opens the door for future experiments to investigate unexplored elements of infant cognition.

In a study recently published in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers from Osaka University, in collaboration with Otsuma Women’s University, NTT Communication Science Laboratories, and the University of Tokyo, revealed that 8-month-old infants can punish antisocial behavior exhibited by a third party. Thus, the motivation driving punishment might be intrinsic as opposed to learned.

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