Are empathy and morality learned or hard-wired in children? A recent University of Chicago study sought to answer this question. Seventeen six to twelve year old children were the subjects of the study. The children were wired for a brain scan, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and shown pictures of people experiencing pain produced either accidentally or intentionally. The researchers found that when the children observed people who were in pain due to accidental causes, the pain centers in the brain were activated. But when the children were shown pictures of people who were intentionally hurt, the brain centers dealing with social interaction and morality were activated. The investigators suggest that their findings indicate that empathy and morality may be hard wired in the brain.(Decety 2008).

While these results are interesting, they fail to take into account the developmental and experiential dimensions. A number of years ago, Jean Piaget made an extensive study of the development of morality in children. He used a variety of techniques. Perhaps the most powerful was the one in which he presented children with two different child accident scenarios and asked them to say which child was more to blame and which one should be punished the most. In one story a child broke 6 dishes while helping his mother put them away. In the second story a child broke one dish in an effort to get some candy that he was told not to take.

Piaget found that before the age of six or seven children judged guilt in terms of the amount of damage done, rather than on the basis of intentionality. That is, young children said that the child who broke the most dishes was more to blame than the one who broke one and should be punished more. After the age of six or seven children judged culpability on the child’s intentions and not on the amount of damage. (Piaget 1950) In a follow up study (Elkind 1978) we included stories of intentional and unintentional personal injury (an accidental bloody nose as opposed to one as a result of a punch by another child.) We found the same age changes as Piaget, with the exception that children arrived at intentionality a year of so earlier when it had to do with personal injury than when it had to do with property damage.

The point is, while some aspects of empathy and morality may be hardwired, at least some aspects are also related to experience and development.

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Decety, e. a. (2008). "Who Caused the Pain? An MRI Investigation of empathy and intentionality in Children." Neuropsychologia 5(26): 10-16.

Elkind, D. Dabek, R., (1978). "Personal injury and property damage in the moral judgment of children." Child Development, 48: 518-522.

Piaget, J. (1950). The Moral Judgment of the Child. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.