In a Michigan News video highlighting a study conducted by the Social Minds Lab, an approximately six-year-old child named Anna sits on the floor at a low table. Across from her is a research assistant holding an orange-haired, bespectacled puppet named Sally. Next to the child, another research assistant explains the rules of the day’s activity: the child (Anna) will be given several tokens, which she can choose to either keep for herself or share with the puppet Sally. In this study, if enough tokens are obtained, they can be redeemed for a prize such as a small toy or a sticker. The advantage of sharing tokens with Sally is that doing so works like an investment: it increases the total number of tokens in play. If Sally then chooses to return the favor and share their fortunes with Anna, it increases her chance of obtaining a prize—but there is also a risk, as the puppet could also simply take the money and run.
But Sally is not very nice. Sally never shares. She just pockets Anna’s tokens for herself every time. Anna learns quickly that it is unwise to trust this little grifter. At one point in the clip, the child weighs her options aloud: “Hmm… I think I’ll put the coin in my own bank. That way, I’ll have that one for sure,” she says while shooting Sally a brief but venomous glare.
Meanwhile, in another research video hosted on the lab's website, a very young boy of 18-months sits on the floor. He stares raptly at a tall man who is clumsily attempting to hang towels on a clothesline. The man drops a clothespin, which drops to the floor. The child’s gaze tracks the falling object closely while the man begins reaching for it and making wordless struggling sounds. With barely a pause, the child crawls over and exerts a substantial effort to stand upright and hand the object to the man. For a few moments afterward, the boy struggles to balance on his feet while smiling up at the man, who emits a relieved sigh.
On the surface, these children’s behaviors may seem unremarkable. Most people have probably seen young children either displaying unprompted “helping” behavior or learning not to trust those who violate the implicit rules of “fair” play. But Felix Warneken, the principal investigator for the Social Minds Lab (and the man shown dropping the clothespin), explains that the children’s behaviors, coupled with their respective ages, actually contradict decades of assumptions about human moral development.
“There has often been an assumption in both scientific literature and common sense that deep down, human nature is self-centered and uncaring,” Warneken says. “In that view, we are basically born selfish, and what allows cooperation or moral behaviors is that we are taught to behave cooperatively or morally by our culture—by parents, teachers, and so forth. At the same time, there is a related view that we learn to help others strategically because we believe we will be rewarded or helped in return.”
Warneken’s research since the mid-‘00s has increasingly forced a revision of those beliefs. For one thing, his studies have shown that children as young as 14 months engage in spontaneous helping behaviors. Warneken and others have argued that the prevalence of those behaviors in such young children (many of whom have not yet learned to speak) shows that their desire to do so cannot be simply taught.
But what about that other old assumption: that young humans first learn to help others because they expect to get a reward or a quid-pro-quo in return? Well, Warneken’s work has helped to bust that myth as well. If anything, humans appear to begin life as more intrinsically altruistic beings, and it is our expectation of being rewarded that is learned over time.
“We have conducted studies on whether the presence of rewards affects young children’s willingness to help,” he explains. “For example, we compared situations where a child always receives a reward for helping with situations where the child never gets one. If it were true that children learn to help based on that sort of strategic self-interest, you would expect those who receive rewards would be more likely to help than those who do not. But that is not what we find. Instead, it seems to be simply the other person’s need for help that triggers the helping behavior in very young children.”
But over time, children do learn to be more self-interested, strategic, and guarded about helping others. In fact, Warneken has found that offering young children rewards for helping can sometimes be counterproductive because it teaches them to expect rewards for helping, and thus to refuse to help when rewards are not offered—or when the sneaky Sallies of the world refuse to play fair.
Warneken’s research since the mid-‘00s has increasingly forced a revision of those beliefs. For one thing, his studies have shown that children as young as 14 months engage in spontaneous helping behaviors. Warneken and others have argued that the prevalence of those behaviors in such young children (many of whom have not yet learned to speak) shows that their desire to do so cannot be simply taught.
But what about that other old assumption: that young humans first learn to help others because they expect to get a reward or a quid-pro-quo in return? Well, Warneken’s work has helped to bust that myth as well. If anything, humans appear to begin life as more intrinsically altruistic beings, and it is our expectation of being rewarded that is learned over time.
“We have conducted studies on whether the presence of rewards affects young children’s willingness to help,” he explains. “For example, we compared situations where a child always receives a reward for helping with situations where the child never gets one. If it were true that children learn to help based on that sort of strategic self-interest, you would expect those who receive rewards would be more likely to help than those who do not. But that is not what we find. Instead, it seems to be simply the other person’s need for help that triggers the helping behavior in very young children.”
But over time, children do learn to be more self-interested, strategic, and guarded about helping others. In fact, Warneken has found that offering young children rewards for helping can sometimes be counterproductive because it teaches them to expect rewards for helping, and thus to refuse to help when rewards are not offered—or when the sneaky Sallies of the world refuse to play fair.
In keeping with the theme of collaboration and helping, much of Warneken’s research has been conducted in collaboration with teams of graduate and undergraduate researchers. Among other mentoring-heavy projects, Warneken co-founded and currently co-directs (along with Nicole Gardner-Neblett, Susan Gelman, and Ioulia Kovelman) the Michigan Summer Program in Cognition and Early Development (MSPICED). MSPICED brings in gifted undergraduates from across the U.S. for 10-week, full-time summer internships. The program, which puts priority on bringing in students from groups that are underrepresented in psychology, allows interns to gain extensive real-world research experience. In fact, the two research assistants shown in the “Sally” video were MSPICED interns Amanda Golden-Eddy (who operated the puppet) and Annie Rashes (who explained the game rules to Anna).
Of MPSICED, Warneken says: “The program offers a rare opportunity for our interns to go both deep and broad on research. In terms of going deep, they work closely with a particular lab on a particular real-world project. But they also get a broader view, including chances to visit and learn from other labs. For example, my lab may be working on the kinds of child behavioral studies we talked about today. But Ioulia Kovelman’s lab offers developmental neuroscience bootcamps, so interns get opportunities to learn how to perform functional near-infrared optical brain imaging studies (fNIRS), which is something I don’t even know how to do. Interns get a chance to be fully immersed in a project for 10 weeks, and they also get to attend more general workshops about experimental design, statistics, and even working with the R statistical programming language.”
As with other human-subjects research, much of Warneken’s work was either moved online or put on hold when the pandemic hit. And while increased online work has benefitted some kinds of research, others—such as studies with very young children or involving technologies like infrared eye-tracking—became essentially impossible. Since restrictions were lifted, both the Social Minds Lab and MSPICED have increasingly shifted back to in-person work, a change Warneken is excited to see.
“Although we started working online out of necessity, it did turn out to be a great opportunity to recruit more kids from outside of the Ann Arbor area,” he says. “But online research only works for some studies. You can work with older, school-age kids over Zoom, but you can’t really work with 2-year-olds or conduct studies that require specialized equipment. It has been very exciting to resume those kinds of studies and to have the MSPICED interns back with us–fully in-person–here in Ann Arbor.”
