They say everybody's got a price -- and now
a new study in the journal Cognition proves
that while babies know better than to accept
nefarious gifts, they'll accept a treat from
the devil himself if the offer's good enough.
Here's how the study went down: Yale psychologist
Karen Wynn and psych grad student Arber Tasimi
introduced 5-and-8-year-olds to two characters:
a nice kid and a mean kid. They both offered
stickers, but while the nice kid offered a
single sticker, the mean kid offered between
2 and 16. Most of the children in the study
had no problem rejecting large numbers of
stickers from the mean kid, except when the
offer hit 16.
Because 16 stickers is 16 STICKERS. Who cares
if there's an increased wedgey risk?
Fair enough. Those are elementary school kids.
But what about babies?
This is where the study really lands.
The researchers conducted a similar experiment
with 12- and 13-month-olds. Only instead of
nice kid/mean kid, they played nice puppet/mean
puppet -- we're talking a real jerk here,
slamming box lids on another puppet who just
wants to fetch a cool toy out of a box.
As opposed to the nice puppet, who tried to help.
After this little Punch and Judy show, the
nice puppet offered the babies a single cracker
while the mean puppet offered two. Eighty
percent of the babies took the single cracker,
because clearly this Punch character is not
a cool customer. But when Punch offered eight
crackers? That's when their resolve crumbled
like the very crackers they sought to gum
and litter the backseat of mom's car with.
How are we supposed to feel about all of this?
On one hand, it drives home a core fact about
infant cognition: Our human larvae come pre-loaded
with the software they need to figure out
this crazy, corrupt and sometimes dangerous
world. That includes logarithmic thinking
and theory of mind - the ability to judge
how another person (or puppet) is thinking.
But does it also mean that humans are sell-outs
down to their very core? That we have an innate
weakness to stranger candy, Nigerian letter schemes and poisoned apples?
Tasimi chooses to focus on the positive take-away:
That even one-year-olds are willing to pay
a personal cost to avoid slimeballs -- some
regardless of the cracker-based fortune.
So how do you feel about these findings? Would
the child in your life take candy from a scary
puppet -- say a Skeksis or Lamb Chop? Let
us know and if you want more weird science
wonder, drop in to Now.Howstuffworks.com each
and every day.
