Five-year-olds know right from wrong.
In a 2025 study, researchers showed young children videos of either a robot or a peer grabbing something that wasn’t theirs or refusing to share. Then they asked a simple question: Was the behavior right or wrong?
The children’s verdict was clear. Stealing and refusing to share were always wrong, period. It didn’t matter whether the bad actor was a playmate or a machine programmed to misbehave.
The children even attributed guilt to the robot, as if it should have known better. “Morality is present even in the youngest children—and it is powerful,” Antonella Marchetti, a professor of developmental and educational psychology known for her work in children’s moral development, said in a press release.
The study naturally invites a question: If five-year-olds condemn wrongdoing, do these judgments begin even earlier—before language?