New research with babies seems to indicate human beings are born kind and caring.

Sigmund Freud famously believed that human beings are born angry and that suppression of this inevitable aggression lies at the heart of our neurosis, while his one time friend and confidante, Carl Jung, believed human beings are born seeking to achieve a sense of wholeness and completion as a fulfilled individual. 

And John Bowlby developed a theory about human relationships, which sought to explain that babies are desperate to achieve secure attachments with caregivers, and distress in failing to achieve this level of love in infancy, affects all a person's relationships throughout life.  If we were insecurely attached to our parents, we'll struggle to form fulfilling relationships with friends, lovers and even our own children, he said.

Most of us are fascinated by what makes us human and why we relate to people and the world around us as we do.

Researchers in Kyoto University have been carrying out a study with infants aged 10 months, to see if humans exhibit sympathy before the age of one.  Babies were shown a short clip involving different coloured shapes which bounced around the screen displaying bullying behaviour - aggressively pursuing and bashing another shape, victim behaviour - being constantly attacked by the other object and a neutral shape which neither attacked nor needed to escape aggression.

They found that when offered a real shape to play with, like the ones in the films, the babies overwhelmingly chose the shape the same as the victim in the clip.  Most rejected the aggressive shape.  Given the choice between the neutral shape and the victim object, they also picked the victim, suggesting this motivation is not just about avoiding aggression - human babies seem hardwired to be drawn to the suffering of others.

This was a relatively small study, but the results are compelling.  It would appear we, as humans, are driven to reach out to those who suffer and sympathise and connect with them; at the deepest levels of our psyche we appear to be kind and caring creatures and not selfish, by design.

As a society, we need to focus much more on this embedded need to be compassionate to one another if we are to create a world where most people live happy contented, emotionally and physically safe lives.  But of course, corporations and governments spend billions on trying to convince us otherwise.