We May Be Born With an Urge to Help by Nicholas Wade NY Times Dec 1, 2009
This article is about how eighteen month year old kids were tested with chimpanzees to find out about how helpful we as a human race may be. It was stated in the article that eighteen month year olds helped out non relatives when they needed to be assisted with opening doors and picking up an object they dropped. It was proven by the age of three years old though that kids may start being more generous to kids that have been nice to them in the past. It was also proven that the kids treated kids in there own social norm differently then kids who are not in there norm. One of the experiments that Dr. Tomasello conducted was he sat kids down in a room and taught them a game. After they had learned the game the kids were then tried to be taught another way to play the game and this did not turn out so good. The kids went as far as screaming and yelling about how they had to play the same way they were taught it the first time. Dr. Tomasello stated that kids are naturally altruistic and they are also selfish but if parents help there kids out by giving them the push on how to behave socially that they will find a good balance between being selfish and generous.
Review by Jesse Greenwald
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Jesse did a good job talking about the tests that kids took. I also like how Jesse explained what all of the results for the tests were. I also like how Jesse mentioned the name of the doctor who was running these tests.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Jesse should have given examples of names of any kids or chimpanzees that were tested. He also could have explained how exactly the tests were being given.
What I really liked about this article was that I figured out that homo sapiens are being compared to a different species.
3) Jesse was clear about the purpose of the article. The purpose is to test kids and chimpanzees. The results of the two species would be compared and contrasted to come to a conclusion of how helpful humans are. Jesse also did an excellent job on stating why humans are compared to Chimpanzees. This is because chimps are DNA are similiar to human DNA. Finally, Jesse explained how the test was conducted. The test was conducted by viewing children's past. They compared the one child who was not treated nicely and a child who was treated nicely. In conclusion, the child who was treated nicely is nicer.
ReplyDelete2) A thing that Jesse could do better is bridge chimps testing to human testing. You only explained how the humans were tested. Second, Jesse can define fancy words. For example, he used the word altruitistic. Without a definition, this can be confusing as to how children behave.
2) I was curios about how Jesse stated children are effected by thier enviorment. If a child is treated nicely it will be nicer. If a child is treated badly it will be mean. A great philospher once said, "Everyone is a product of thier expierences." This is true in everyon's life.
In the article, “We May Be Born with an Urge to Help,” shows that children are born with an urge to help everyone, but as they grow older they will only help selective people, such as friends and family. As they grow older, they will also only listen to peers in their social group. I thought that Jesse’s summary of the article was very well summarized for such as long article. It also contained a good description of the precise tests carried out on the 18-month olds and the 3-year olds. The comparisms to chimpanzees was an interesting aspect to the article.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the article had several spelling errors, making it confusing to read. The grammar of the article was also a little confusing.
Overall, while this article will not make a huge impact, as knowing that children are born friendly will not change anything, it is still an interesting topic and a well-written summary.
I think this is a very interesting article with a very significant subject that is relevant to the concept of human nature. The experiment that they have conducted really takes on kids attitudes they may have when they grow up and why. I also liked it when Jesse put in that if parents don't do something about behavior, they could grow up to be hateful and rude. Bud despite what he did good, he could have been more specific about how the game worked, what was the game, and how Dr. Tomasello changed the rules of the game that made the kids scream at each other. But I find this article very interesting because it really stands out from the other science articles, and takes on a whole new subject.
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