Is your three-year-old fair? How morality develops through childhood

The battle between selfishness and fairness takes a surprisingly long time to resolve in children, but shows the seeds of adult moral sense

On the one hand, humans are stupendously nice to each-other. We send money overseas to help complete strangers, we give of ourselves anonymously and muddle along in large groups largely through an improbable degree of tact and solicitude.

Research with very young infants suggests the foundations of this morality are present at birth. Before they can speak, infants prefer helpful characters over mean characters and expect meanness to be punished.