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Essay / The Nature of Man - 517
Throughout the ages, people have debated the nature of man and the complexity of this issue. According to various studies as well as the ideas of major writers and philosophers, man is born naturally good. However, society and environmental factors determine whether one will stay that way or become bad. When one is born, one is naturally good, but one's environment and interactions with people from a young age determine whether or not one will develop a sense of evil throughout one's life. According to a study led by Kiley Hamlin, Karen Wynn and Paul Bloom at the psychology department at Yale University, even infants who cannot speak have the ability to differentiate between civilized and savage behavior, and “okay” with civilized behavior in their own way. In the above experiment, three puppets were presented to nineteen different babies (all three puppets had distinct colors, easy for babies to differentiate) in an attempt to understand whether or not babies are oriented toward good or bad people. During the experiment, initially, a puppy...