There is a large body of research demonstrating and delineating the complex moral instincts of young children, including babies far too young for these to have been socialized into them. Babies exhibit empathy, fairness, justice, and the ability to judge “goodness”ย and “badness”ย of human behavior.
Some of these emotions, such as disgust and outrage, can fuel either compassion or cruelty. Even empathy has the potential to fuelย aggression, as when someoneโsย empathicย identification with an in-group victim leads them to exactย revengeย on a perceived out-group perpetrator.
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What appears to motivate this kind ofย altruisticย behavior is intense empathic distressโa literal case of โI feel your pain.โ Neuroscientific experiments indicate that in humans, the same emotional brain circuits are activated when we ourselves feel pain and when we observe others feeling pain. Empathy is a very physical reaction and is closely related toย unconsciousย mirroring behavior or imitation. It is frequently automatic and involuntary, such as when we wince or flinch when we see someone get injured.
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Unbalanced, indiscriminate empathy would not have been adaptive for evolutionary survival. Natural selection in primates has produced bothย empathy and aggression, as well as cooperativenessย and competitiveness.
