– It is a long debated subject in psychology if altruism is the result of nature or nurture. According to a research conducted by Stanford scientists, Rodolfo Cortes Barragan and Carol Dweck, children are not “born nice,” and experience and environment play a determining role in this domain. 

– A previous study done in 2006 revealed that 18-month-old toddlers were eager to spontaneously help the experimenters. At that time, those findings reinforced what the scientists considered as evidence of inborn altruism and it became the basis of many subsequent researches. The Stanford study shows that this was probably a wrong assumption and that altruism is not an inborn virtue but is learned.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE