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<div><BR>Keith wrote:<BR>"Is a sense of morality and moral behavior a widespread psychological<BR>trait in human populations?<BR><BR>reply: NO, a child has no sense of morality or moral behavior.</div>
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<div>It depends on how you are defining morality. Are we talking about being born with clearly defined rules of behavior? This could be as simple as taking care of offspring and your other family members. In that case, moral behavior is clearly genetic. If we are talking about helping others with no expectation of gain, altruism is also exhibited in small children and chimpanzees. Concepts of right and wrong behavior occur in species other than humans. It's one thing to train dogs. But dogs in the wild develop their own rules which are different from other animals. Chimpanzees and baboons are the best example because they actually have highly developed codes of behavior. Often the entire group will shun a particular member of the group when they behave badly for not sharing or inappropriate sexual transgressions. </div>
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<div>Only if you define morality as following rules set down by a higher power do you get to say this. A child may not be borm with a sense of God, but moral behavior is definitely shown to be a inheritable psychological trait. </div></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></body></html>