We may be hard wired to be moral

Yale Psychologist Paul Bloom believes human beings are hard-wired to be moral. During the discussion of his work at the Edge Foundation conference on the New Science of Morality, Bloom clarifies that he’s more hesitant about his conclusions than he might first appear, but his work still has interesting implications. If any of this is true, then what are the mechanisms that push us to work against our hard wiring? (And, does anyone doubt that humans are not always moral?) If we’re born with a sense of morality, how do we lose it? What is this hard wiring? Is our baby sense of right and wrong specific, or is this just a general sense that these two categories exist?

Bloom provides an intro to his work in his conference bio:

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What if babies aren't unrepentant sociopaths?

Yale researcher Paul Bloom writes about some surprising research.

Many parents and educators would endorse a view of infants and toddlers close to that of a recent Onion headline: “New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths.” ...

A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.