Kate, over at one of my favorite baby blogs, Babylune just posted a very interesting read, Babies Prefer Good Samaritans, about a new baby study.

The new study, fresh from the Yale University Infant Cognition Center notes that people who are popular with babies may have better character than people unpopular on the baby scene. This is such a cool study because it shows just how clever babies can be. When shown a series of short puppet shows, babies between the ages of 6 and 10 months, were able to tell the difference between helpful and hindering puppets.

Kate’s post reports a quote from lead researcher Kiley Hamlin, “Babies are very competent socially. They can figure this out without people explicitly teaching them what’s nice and not nice and who’s nice and who’s not nice.” Very neat that babies are so smart. Although, this isn’t totally new news to intuitive mamas. We’ve all seen our babes react to nice vs. non-nice people. I swear my son as a baby sometimes had better gut instincts than I had about certain people.

So, if you’re popular with babies it’s a little self-esteem boost. If you’re not popular with babies well, now you have something to work on.