Photo/Illutration A baby watches a video in an experiment. (Provided by Osaka University assistant professor Xianwei Meng)

The human tendency to respect people who display behavior that appears supernatural, such as by cult leaders, over others is hardwired rather than socially conditioned, a study of babies suggests for the first time.

Children aged 12 months to 16 months expressed awe when a normal character in an anime video defeated one that could fly, in an experiment conducted by the scientists known as a violation of expectations. The study involved 96 children.

The result of the experiment by the scientists from Osaka University, the Kochi University of Technology and elsewhere indicates that “humans may have a universal perception of supernaturalism in their early development stages,” said Xianwei Meng, an assistant professor of psychology at Osaka University’s graduate school.

“Babies are much more ‘social’ than adults believe, such as already knowing the concept of superiority in relationships,” Meng said.

The scientists' research also indicated that small children believe that someone who appears to have psychic ability, the ability to fly or other superhuman abilities, is superior to someone who does not, a discovery expected to explain why people who are believed to have supernatural powers are able to seize control of religious groups.

“Though rational thinking predominates these days, people touting themselves as having supernatural powers still win a certain degree of support,” said Yo Nakawake, an assistant professor of psychology at the Kochi University of Technology. “Our finding may prove useful for understanding that phenomenon.”

Researchers including Nakawake, Meng and Kazuhide Hashiya, a developmental psychology professor at Kyushu University, had children view four videos showing animated characters with different capabilities competing with each other, with the one that succeeded in obtaining an object deemed the winner.

The method known as a violation of expectations was used for the test. Humans and many animals are surprised when things go against their expectations and are prone to gaze at visuals in which such an event occurs longer than they would when seeing a situation play out that went as they expected.

Babies who watched a video in which a character with the power to levitate that was blue lost to one with no special powers that was red stared longer at the monitor it was showing on than they did when they watched a video where the one that could levitate won. 

They also stared longer when watching a video where a character that could move instantaneously that was blue lost to a character with no supernatural powers that was red.

These results led the scientists to conclude that the children's reactions came from their expectation being betrayed that the one with special abilities must triumph.

When the blue character moved along a bridge or behind walls without using its special powers to do so, the children exhibited no signs of surprise and spent about the same amount of time watching, regardless of whether it or its rival with no supernatural ability won.

Previous studies have suggested that when babies believed character A was more likely to get an object than character B, they thought “A was superior to B from a social perspective,” according to the scientists.

Traditionally, analyses of how displaying supernatural abilities can serve as a source of social power have been the domain of sociology and anthropology, Nakawake said.

The researchers’ findings, which were published in the British scientific journal Scientific Reports, can be viewed at (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89821-0).

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