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Funny how prophetic those words from Sesame Street, trying to teach young children a skill they know apparently already know. An interesting study comes out of Yale this month, babies as young as 6 months pick “nice” over “mean”. Babies watched as a “googly-eyed-toy” tried to climb a roller coaster hills. Another googly toy came along and either pushed the toy off the hill or helped it climb. They were then presented with the toys to see which toy they would play with.

Nearly every child picked the “nice” toy over the bad ones. They also picked “nice” toys over neutral toys, toys that neither helped nor hindered. There was no difference between girls and boys. When the toys had their “eyes” removed (their human feature) babies did not make these distinctions.

“It’s incredibly impressive that babies can do this”, said study leader Kiley Hamlin a Yale psychology researcher.” It shows we have these essential social skills occurring without much explicit teaching.”

It makes me wonder just what goes wrong between 10 months old and three, the age we start re-teaching children to be “nice”. That cooperation works.

People regard Mr. Rogers in a dismissive light but I have always thought a good hour of two of his program would do most adults some good. A quick brush up on the use of please and thank you, examples of the many way one can become part of a community, and ways to be a good neighbor~ some of these skills seem to be thrust aside for “me first” mentality. Mr. Rogers says, “You go first, then I’ll follow”~ cooperation, and what follows is sure to be good.

Exactly how we humans navigate the maze that is life fascinates me. There are those that say might is right, man is more animal than human. Then along comes a small study, and we see ourselves anew. Perhaps nice is best, and the choice to less than human is just that~ a choice. Perhaps our natures are colored with the divine, that our better selves are our true selves.

My advice? Go find a friendly baby; try to learn something from that child. Barring that, watch a couple of hours of quality children’s programming. If we learned to be naughty, we can learn to be nice.