I’ve developed kind of a habit of listing to National Public Radio on Sundays. During the course of the day, I overheard an interview with a graduate student that piqued my interest. Her research revealed that babies as young as 3-months old preferred the toys who had exhibited better character. Allow me to explain, for this may seem a little abstract.
This young woman basically played with babies by performing little skits using toys. Her observations were that, once the play was finished, the babies preferred the toys who had been “nice”during playtime. When asked how she knew how the baby was reacting to character rather than a preferred color, she explained that she would use two stuffed toys of different colors in multiple experiments with different children. In spite of the color of the toy, infants predominantly chose the “nice” toy over the one whose part in the play had been “mean.”