What morality is, where it comes from, and how it changes throughout our lives are fundamental questions for the experience of being human. We can think of morality as simply a set of values and norms that label different actions as good or bad (Crockett, 2013). A key debate is whether people are born with a moral compass that helps them to understand these norms or whether morality is learned and depends more on our experiences and environment. Here, we discuss the latest scientific understanding of how morality changes or remains constant from birth to old age.

Studying morality in our earliest years presents a great challenge. We can’t ask babies for their judgment of different situations, and it is hard to get any infant to sit still for a long time in an experiment to measure their behavior. To get around some of these challenges, many researchers have used “looking time” experiments. In these experiments, researchers record where an infant looks, and looking longer at one thing than another is taken as showing they have a preference or are picking up that something unexpected has happened.

These studies have shown that the experience of guilt might start early in infancy. However, it is perhaps not until age 3 or 4 that more complex moral decision-making develops. At this age, infants may start to noticeably dislike if they are given an unequal share of sweets split with another child.

Some researchers argue that children show an early preference for other people who act morally compared to people who act in an immoral way. Yet others have argued that the findings of this research........

© Psychology Today