Are people innately good or innately bad?

Looking back on Tuesday’s class, I continued to wonder whether or not we are innately good, or innately bad. I found an article that talks about a study done at Yale University. In this experiment, the researchers were trying to get a better idea of whether or not humans are innately good though a study with babies. This study used a “puppet show” that had brightly colored shapes as the characters. One of the shapes was struggling to go up a hill, the other two shapes either helped or hindered the first shape from going up the hill. Then after the show, the babies were given the choice to reach for either the shape that helped or the shape that hindered the original shape going up the hill. The researchers found that the babies were more likely to reach for the shape that helped. The next part of the study was done as part two of the puppet show. The shape that was struggling to go up the hill either went to the shaped that helped or the shape that hindered. The study found that the babies were more likely to look longer, showing their surprise when the shape who struggled to go up the hill went to the shape that had not helped. Overall, this study helped to show that babies, who have minimal cultural influence have expectations of how people should act. I had found it interesting that the study used babies as I would have expected using babies would have been harder to gather the data that is needed, and parents would be less likely to give consent for researchers to use their child. I do think that we are born innately good and are then influenced by society and culture to change our beliefs on what is “good and bad”. Overall, I think that this study is a good representation of how children, and we as people are born innately good.