The idea that babies are the embodiment of sweetness and innocence always struck me as a bit odd, since they spend most of their day screaming until their demands are met and have been known to randomly bite loved ones. Yet, according to a new study infants do have some redeeming qualities aside from looking ridiculously adorable in footie pyjamas. Babies as young as 15 months understand fairness, and some may be willing to let you check out their most prized LEGO toy, if you ask nicely.
For a study published in the journal PLoS ONE, 15-month old babies sat on a parent’s lap and watched two short videos of researchers sharing. Using either crackers or milk, one video showed two people receiving equal portions of food, and the other showed and unequal distribution. Most of the 47 babies in the study stared longer at the videos in which one person got more food than the other. According to a phenomenon called the “violation of expectancy,” babies spend more time looking at things when they’re surprised (presumably there was some kind of control that took into account their passion for looking at shiny objects). “The infants expected an equal and fair distribution of food, and they were surprised to see one person given more crackers or milk than the other,” says University of Washington psychology professor Jessica Sommerville, who led the study.