“You’ve Got to be Taught…”
Galatians 3:23-29
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
August 11, 2013
I hadn’t planned to watch 60 Minutes that night. I walked into the room to show something to Fran, and there they were on the TV: cute babies and cute puppets. I couldn’t resist.
The segment was called “The Baby Labs.” Lesley Stahl was interviewing psychologist Karen Wynn, director of the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University, and her husband, Paul Bloom, also a professor of psychology at Yale. Both have spent the last decade conducting research on infants. Their studies address questions about human nature: are we born good, with some basic sense of morality? Are we blank slates, on which our parents and communities write their values? Are we naturally selfish?
Devising studies involving infants requires creativity. The babies can’t fill out questionnaires or run through mazes. But there are ways to ascertain preferences. Babies as young as three months will indicate a choice between two objects by how long they look at each one. At five months, babies will reach out their arms to show their preference.
For the first set of experiments, the researchers put on a puppet show. One puppet tried to open a box with a toy inside. Another puppet—a puppy in a yellow shirt—came over and helped out. The scene repeated, only this time a puppy in a blue shirt slammed the box shut, keeping the original puppet from getting the toy. Then a researcher, who didn’t see the original scene, showed the two puppies to the child. Over 75% of the infants showed a strong preference to the puppy who was being kind and fair, the one in the yellow shirt.
In part two of that experiment, the puppy who had been unkind tried to open the box to get the toy. One bunny came to help; another came and slammed the box shut. This time, 81% of the babies preferred the bunny who had kept the unkind puppy from getting a toy. Perhaps they felt the unkind puppy didn’t deserve it.
At a very basic level, the researchers theorized, these babies have the seeds of a sense of justice—right and wrong, even reward and punishment. Infants, this study suggests, are not blank slates.
The next set of experiments was more complicated. First the researchers offered each baby a choice between graham crackers and cheerios. Little Nate chose cheerios. Then they showed him two cat puppets—an orange one who liked cheerios and a gray one who chose graham crackers. Nate indicated he preferred the orange one—the one who liked the same food he did.
They took the experiment one step further. They showed the gray cat—the one who like graham crackers instead—trying to open the box to get a toy. Two more puppets appeared—one who helped the gray cat and one who slammed the box shut. Nate preferred the puppet who slammed the box shut, the one who hurt the cat who liked graham crackers instead of cheerios. 87% of the babies made the same set of choices—preferring the cat who liked the same food they did, seeming to want the one who liked the other food to be hurt.
Even at a very young age, these babies show a strong preference for the puppets they perceive to be like them, even if the similarity is as trivial as a choice of snack food. More troubling, they seem to want the puppets that are unlike them to be hurt.
As she responded to this striking result, interviewer Lesley Stahl brought up the familiar tune from Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, You’ve got to be carefully taught: “We used to think that we’re taught to hate,” she mused. “I think there was a song like that. This is suggesting that we’re not taught to hate; we’re born to hate.”
The researchers concurred. Karen Wynn said, “I think we are built to, you know, at the drop of a hat, create us and them.” Paul Bloom elaborated, “We are predisposed to break the world up into different human groups based on the most subtle and seemingly irrelevant cues…”
Fortunately, the segment didn’t end there. They described one more experiment, this time with slightly older children. The kids sat at a table that was blue on one side and green on the other. Each side had some tokens on it, which the kids were told could be traded in for prizes. They were also told that another child would come in later, after they were gone, and their choices would determine what that other child would get. If, for example, Abby picked the green side, she would get one token and the child who was to come in later would get none. If Abby picked the blue side, she would get two tokens and the other child would also get two.
The youngest children consistently picked the green side—one token for themselves and nothing for the other child. They didn’t care that the blue side would yield them more prizes; their primary concern was making sure they got more than another child.
But it changed when they tried the experiment with older kids. By age 8, kids started choosing the blue option—the one that seemed more fair. By age 10, the children even started making decisions that gave the unknown child more than they themselves received.
Good news! These children have learned as they have grown. They have learned to value their instinct for fairness over their impulse to divide the world into us and them.
What a fascinating set of studies. As with any social science research, the conclusions must be taken with a grain of salt. What other factors come into play in the choices the babies and children made? Did the analysis account for favorite colors? For trying to please the researcher? Even with all those caveats, this series of studies raises important questions as we seek to understand who we are as humans and how we are called to live.
The Baby Lab studies paint a picture of human beings as deeply complex creatures. From our birth, the studies suggest, we hold within us almost contradictory impulses—an instinct for fairness and an inclination toward prejudice. How these impulses are played out in our lives is shaped by a complicated intersection of our experiences, the values our families and communities teach, and surely a bunch of other factors as well.
There is a lot of truth expressed in that song from South Pacific: “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear, you’ve got to be taught from year to year, It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear….You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, before you are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate, you’ve got to be carefully taught!” We know that hate is easily learned, and we know there are way too many people in our world all too eager to teach that lesson.
The Baby Lab results suggest there’s another equally important song to be sung: “You’ve got to be taught not to hate…” We’ve got to be taught to grow beyond that deep-rooted human instinct to divide the world into us and them. We’ve got to be taught to value the impulse for justice over the inclination for prejudice. We’ve got to be carefully taught—not just before we are 6 or 7 or 8, but throughout our whole lives—to recognize those who are different from us as our brothers and sisters.
The Baby Lab researchers suggest that the instinct to divide the world into “us and them” is likely a left-over from our evolutionary past. Survival of the fittest in hunter-gatherer times probably did mean being suspicious of those who were not in your clan. We could have a fascinating conversation about whether that is still true today—or whether, in this global village, our survival is dependent on us growing past that instinct. Is survival now contingent on learning that our personal well-being is tied up in the well-being of every other creature on this planet?
It’s a fascinating question, but in some ways it is the wrong one to ask here in church. Our faith teaches us that the purpose of life is not mere survival. We are meant for so much more than that. Our lives are a gift of love from God, and so our lives are meant to be a gift of love to our world. Our faith calls us beyond the hunter-gatherer’s quest for survival, beyond our in-born instinct to create an “us and them” vision of the world.
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul calls the early church to a different vision of the world, a world experienced through the transformative power of knowing Christ. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
It is a beautiful vision, and, as the Baby Lab Studies remind us, it is a deeply challenging one. Paul calls the early church to let go of some of the most basic ways they divided their world. Paul calls us to move beyond our most basic survival instincts, to embrace the person we are inclined to define as the other, to look for the things that bind us together instead of the differences that tear us apart.
Paul’s vision isn’t based on a psychological study, or an analysis of what will enable the human race to survive. It is an expression of both the power and the promise of faith. When we are in Christ, when we dare to trust Jesus’ message of God’s amazing, all-encompassing love, we begin to develop a new instinct. This instinct is beyond that inborn impulse toward prejudice, it is even beyond our natural sense of fairness. It is an instinct to reach out in love to those we perceive as different and embrace them as brothers and sisters. That is the power of faith to transform our lives. The promise of faith is that God will be with us in our lifelong efforts to grow into that instinct for love.
We’ve got to be taught, before it’s too late. We’ve got to be taught, before we are six or seven or eight, and when we are 27 and 39 and 51 and 88. God’s love is powerful enough to overcome the basic human instinct toward prejudice–to bridge the chasm between us and them. God’s love is powerful enough to inspire us to give the other kid more tokens than we take. God’s love is powerful enough to create in us a new instinct—the instinct for love. Let us learn and teach this wondrous lesson. Amen.