Neither. Good and Evil are dictated by society. What I know is that we humans are naturally self serving, self preserving, and self fulfilling. Depending on how one is brought up and their morals... that can be seen as good (independent, go-getter, leader) and/or evil (selfish). I always bring this up as I find it quite amusing that children have to be taught how to share. There is a stage in a child's development that they call the mine-stages. One does not teach a child to be selfish but that seems to come naturally. Thus my statement above.Sajedene
Quote from study i posted:
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In the first experiment, we compared the helpfulness of chimpanzees and human infants toward unfamiliar individuals. Subjects were 36 semi–free ranging chimpanzees born in the wild who were tested by a human with whom they had virtually no prior interaction (no training, no feeding, no previous testing). In addition, 36 18-mo-old human infants (same age as in [15]) were tested by an unfamiliar adult in a similar context, allowing a direct quantitative comparison between species. The general idea of the testing situation was that an object was placed out of reach for the recipient, but within reach of the subject. Helping consisted of handing the object to the recipient. To assess the motivations underlying helping, we varied whether the recipient made an unsuccessful attempt to get the object (reaching versus no reaching) and whether he rewarded the subjects in exchange for the object (reward versus no reward). If subjects are responsive to the other's goal, they should hand the object more often in reaching than in no-reaching conditions. If they are primarily interested in their own immediate benefit, they should help more often in reward than in no-reward conditions.
In the chimpanzee experiment, after experimenter 1 and 2 (E1 and E2) struggled over a wooden stick to highlight its value for E1, E2 placed the stick in the hallway (Figure 1A, Video S1). Then, according to the condition, E1 would either outstretch his arm through the bars towards the stick (Reaching) or look at the object but not reach for it (No Reaching). In addition, he would either hold a piece of banana in view of the subject, which he gave them in exchange for the stick (Reward) or not have any food available (No Reward). The same basic procedure was used to test infants' helping. As a reward for the infants, we used toy cubes that were needed to play a highly motivating novel game. The helping scenario was as follows: E1 sat at the desk, using a pen to write a letter. E2 walked toward her, snatched the pen out of her hand, and put it on a stool in front of the desk out of E1′s reach (Figure 1B, Video S2). As with the chimpanzees, E1 then performed the behaviors according to the four conditions. Each subject was individually administered ten consecutive trials in one of four between-subject conditions (Reach–Reward; Reach–No Reward; No Reach–Reward; No Reach–No Reward). Thus, in each of the four conditions, nine chimpanzees and nine human infants were tested for a comparison of 72 subjects total. Each trial lasted up to 60 s: During the first 30 s, E1 vocalized and focused on the object, whereas in the remaining 30 s, E1 in addition called the subject's name and alternated gaze between the target object and the subject.
We conducted a four-way mixed-models analysis of variance on the mean percentage of trials with helping, entering species, reach, and reward as between-subject and 1st versus 2nd half of session as within-subject factor. As displayed in Figure 2, helping occurred more often in reaching than in no-reaching conditions [F (1,64) = 14.52, p< 0.001], independently of species and reward (no main effects, no interactions). Pairwise comparisons using independent sample t-tests confirmed that reaching was the only significant factor, also when analyzed separately by species. On an individual level, 12 of 18 chimpanzees and 16 of 18 infants tested in reaching conditions helped at least once. For infants as well as for chimpanzees, the determining factor as to whether help was provided was whether the experimenter unsuccessfully attempted to retrieve the object. This indicates that subjects were motivated to help the experimenter with his/her unachieved goal (seeing the other succeed might even be intrinsically motivating for them), but did not aim at retrieving a material reward for themselves. Rewarding their helping was unnecessary and did not even raise the rate of helping in either case."
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