Research shows babies have a moral compass: Children want to see wrongdoing punished at 8 months old.

Research shows babies have a moral compass: Children want to see wrongdoing punished at 8 months old.: Children’s moralizing impulses are sometimes reflected in violence but are also expressed in a more subtle way. Children tattle. When they see wrongdoing, they are apt to complain about it to an authority figure, and they don’t need to be prompted to do so. In one study, 2- and 3-year-olds were taught a new game to play with a puppet; when the puppet started to break the rules, the children would spontaneously complain to adults. In studies of siblings between the ages of 2 and 6, investigators found that most of what the children said to their parents about their brothers or sisters counted as tattling. And their reports tended to be accurate. They were ratting their sibs out, but they were not making things up.