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The youngest children have a great capacity for empathy and altruism. There's a recent study that shows even 14-month-olds will climb across a bunch of cushions and go across a room to give you a pen if you drop one.

Alison Gopnik

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Alison Gopnik
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: June 16
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
A. Gopnik
A Gopnik
Gopnik
Gopnik A
Gopnik A.
Giving
Across
Climb
Children
Capacity
Pens
Great
Months
Recent
Even
Room
Climbs
Rooms
Month
Cushions
Study
Empathy
Olds
Shows
Drop
Youngest
Give
Bunch
Altruism

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The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, 'Gee, you are really special' to that sack of water and protein that is a body, and you can get it to do practically anything.
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Adults tend to think they have much free will. Kids younger than six are less sure. They may be more realistic!
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Caring for children has always been one of the deepest and most satisfying things that a human being does, and yet it is hard to keep a healthy attitude toward it in our competitive, outcome-oriented society.
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Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.
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The largest and most powerful computers are still no match for the smallest and weakest humans.
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I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.
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Young children seem to be learning who to share this toy with and figure out how it works, while adolescents seem to be exploring some very deep and profound questions: how should this society work? How should relationships among people work? The exploration is: who am I, what am I doing?
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Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways.
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Scientists learn about the world in three ways: They analyze statistical patterns in the data, they do experiments, and they learn from the data and ideas of other scientists. The recent studies show that children also learn in these ways.
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We know that kids who grow up in an environment of warmth and support will thrive and function in whatever environment they find themselves. What we need to do is to do more to help poor kids have such an environment.
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The best scientific way to discover if one factor influences another is to do a controlled experiment.
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The more obsessively we focus on what a particular food is going to do for us, the less healthy we've become. Simple pleasures become complicated.
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One of the most distinctive evolutionary features of human beings is our unusually long, protected childhood.
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I'm culturally Jewish but, like most scientists, an atheist: I don't believe there's a God or supernatural world. Buddhism offers guidance on what to do in a world without God: It opines that truly being present in the world‚ experiencing and hanging out with your loved ones, provides all the significance you could want.
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Caring, whether for children or the dying, shouldn't be instrumental. It should be an intrinsic, moral good.
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We provide a secure, stable space for children to grow up in, so children will be able to take risks and have adventures and do things that are unexpected. If there isn't a risk that your children can fail, then you haven't succeeded as a parent.
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What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers.
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Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.
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On the Web we all become small-town visitors lost in the big city.
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Ineffective or weak brain connections are pruned in much the same way a gardener would prune a tree or bush, giving the plant a desired shape.
Alison Gopnik