A Conversation with Paul Bloom, Author of Just Babies
Paul Bloom Q) What’s up with the title?
A) It’s meant to be playful, because it has two quite different
meanings. Just Babies can express a reasonable skepticism about
the abilities of these tiny creatures—what do you expect of them,
they’re just babies? But of course “just” also derives from
justice—as in “a just society”—and so the title captures one of
the main arguments of the book, which is that we are born as
moral creatures. We start off as just babies. I know this sounds
like a remarkable cl, but I hope that my book will convince
people to take it seriously.
Q) What made you choose to write this book at this moment?
A) These are exciting times for anyone interested in morality.
There are major developments in areas like social neuroscience,
evolutionary theory, and moral philosophy. And several research
teams—including my own at Yale—are making surprising discoveries
about the moral lives of babies and children. I think that now,
perhaps for the first time in history, we have scientifically
informed answers to some of the questions that matter most: How
is it that we are capable of transcendent kindness—and
unspeakable cruelty? How do evolution, culture, parenting, and
religion conspire to shape our moral natures? How do we make
sense of people’s strongly held opinions about , gay
marriage, affirmative action, and torture? And how can we become
better people? Just Babies tries to answer these questions.
Q) How can you even study morality in babies?
A) In most of our own studies, we use puppet shows. We show
babies characters who interact in certain ways—such as one
individual helping another or one individual hitting another—and
then see who the babies want to interact with, who they want to
reward, and who they want to punish. Using these methods, we have
discovered that even young babies have the capacity for moral
judgment.
Q)So are babies naturally good, or naturally evil?
A) Both! We are born with empathy and compassion, the capacity
to judge the actions of others, and a rudimentary understanding
of justice and fairness. Morality is bred in the . But there
is a nastier side to our natures as well. There’s a lot of
evidence that even the youngest babies carve the world into Us
versus Them—and they are strongly biased to favor the Us. We are
very tribal beings. Our natures are not just kind; they are also
cruel and selfish. We favor those who look like us and are
naturally cold-blooded towards strangers.
Q) Does this mean that prejudice and racism are inevitable?
A) Happily, no. For one thing, social experience really
matters—babies and children have to learn who Us versus Them is
by observing how those around them act. So while some
distinctions are inevitable, such as friends versus strangers,
others are not. Notably, it only pretty late in development—by
about the age of five—that some children come to use skin color
and similar cues when decide who to befriend and who to prefer.
Before this, they don’t know that race matters, and so whether or
not children will be racist is dependent on how they are raised;
what sort of social environments they find themselves in.
Also, we are smart critters, smart enough to override our
impulses and biases when we think they are inappropriate. Once we
learn about these ugly aspects of our nature, we can move to
combat them. We can create treaties and international
organizations ed at protecting universal human rights. We can
employ procedures such as blind reviewing and blind auditions
that are designed to prevent judges from being biased,
consciously or unconsciously, by a candidate’s race—or anything
other than what is under evaluation.
Q) It seems as if a lot of your interest is in how we come to
transcend our hard-wired morality.
A) That’s right. A complete theory of morality has to have two
parts. It starts with what we are born with, and this is
surprisingly rich. But a critical part of our morality—so much of
what makes us human—is not the product of evolution, but emerges
over the course of human history and individual development. It
is the product of our compassion, our imagination, and our
magnificent capacity for reason. We bring all that to bear when
we consider such questions as: How much should we give to
charity? Is it right to eat meat? Are there any sorts of
con sex acts that are morally wrong?
Q) What do you want to accomplish with this book?
A) Two things. First, many people believe that we are born
selfish and amoral—that we start off as natural-born psychopaths.
And many argue that we are, as David Hume put it, slaves of the
passions: our moral judgments and moral actions are the product
of neural mechanisms that we have no awareness of and no
conscious control over. Intelligence and wisdom are largely
impotent. This is an ugly view of human nature. Now, if it were
true, we should buck up and learn to leave with it. But it’s not
true; these dismissive cls are refuted by everyday experience,
by history, and by the science of developmental psychology. We
are moral animals, and we are powerfully influenced by our
capacity for reason.
Second, I think there are practical implications to the
scientific study of morality. If you’re interested in reducing
racism and bigotry, for instance, it is critical to understand
our inborn proclivity to favor our own group over others; if you
want to create a just society, you’ll want to learn about how we
naturally think about fairness and equity. Good social policy is
informed by an understanding of human nature at its best and its
worst, and this is what Just Babies is all about.