Israeli Scientists Find That Babies Develop Empathy As Early As Six Months
A baby Image by iStock
If you think that an infant is just lumps of cooing, crying, smiling, sleeping and pooping, think again.
Resesarchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Hebrew University in Israel found that babies as young as six months actually can exhibit empathy.
In a paper published in British Journal of Psychology, researchers doing two experiments debunked the theory that babies only develop the ability to empathize after one year.
Babies age 5-9 months were shown videos of simple figures – one being bullied and one having a positive social interaction. Afterwards, 80% chose the bullied character.
In the second experiment, when the babies were just shown the figures without the accompanying video, they did not choose the sad character, proving they only chose it when it experienced bullying.
“There is a complex social decision they are making — they understand the situation,” said Dr. Florina Uzefovsky, head of the BGU Bio-Empathy Lab and senior lecturer in BGU’s department of psychology and the Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience. “They do prefer distressed characters being bullied, but not when someone is just being a crybaby,” she told the Forward. Studies like these, she said, disproves earlier developmental psychology theory positing that babies cannot be empathic because they have no separate sense of self.
“In the last decade we started to figure out that infants are more savvy than we give them credit for,” she said, noting that in this experiment, “We wanted to create a paradigm that would be able to test for empathy in earlier stages.”
An earlier study from 2007 showed babies as young as six months preferred a “helper” over a “hinderer” – i.e. someone who was helpful rather than destructive. Although those results could just suggest babies were good at getting their needs met, this study is not about self-interest. “It might be nicer to be around someone positive, but they put aside their desire to be around someone fun to be near someone who has experience distress,” Dr. Uzefovsky said. “It’s the early origins of morality.”
She hopes that future experiments can “ask” different questions, such as if babies would respond to a character that loses something. “We want to map out conditions needed to elicit empathic response.”
Most parents realize that even young babies perceive the world around it and interact with it. But what this study shows, in a practical sense, is that, “Even very young babies have complex social judgments and are savvy interpreters of the world, “ she said, advising parents: “Be aware how you behave around babies, because they are looking and understanding.”
Amy Klein is the author of The Trying Game: How to Get Pregnant and Get Through Fertility Treatment Without Losing Your Mind. (Ballantine, 2020).
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
