Babies might the cutest little things on Earth but that doesn't mean they're upstanding citizens. Aside from the fact that they can't stand up, researchers have found they lack any sort of moral code. This research refutes earlier research that they are moral. The newer study shows they just like bouncy stuff.

In a 2007 study, babies were found to have a innate sense of morality through the following experiment. They were presented with two scenarios involving two toys each. In the first, a wooden toy attempted to climb a hill and another helped it do so (by bouncing ... I don't quite understand it either, but this is important). In the second, a wooden toy tried to climb a hill while another collided into it and knocked it down (and did not bounce).

The infants could pick up either the helping toy or the hindering toy, and they generally chose the helper. The study took this to mean the babies didn't want a toy that was a jerk.

Well, researchers from New Zealand's University of Otago thought there was something off with this study, so they conducted their own. Noticing that the "jerk" toy collided into the one trying to get up the hill and the helping toy had a fun, bouncing motion to it, they thought babies could be choosing the latter for reasons other than morality.

So they conducted a study to see which it was by switching up the toys. The bouncy guy was now someone you'd never want to hang out with. And, sadly, the babies went with that one, even though it was now the jerk.

Style over substance, baby.

Via Smithsonian