In Just Babies, Paul Bloom describes morality as something we are born with. He goes on to highlight several aspects that come together to form our morality. These include empathy, fairness, punishment, family, strangers, and bodies. Empathy is something that struck me the most through my forensic psychology course. Are we born with empathy and does it develop over time? If we are born without empathy, how does this affect our choices and life after childhood? These are complex questions that contain copious amounts of components, but they are important. The nature vs. nurture debate is what comes to mind when I try to express my opinion. I believe that empathy is innate and is cultivated over time to become even greater. As are most things in life. What happens if children come into the world without empathy? How will they affect others? I will talk about animals first because animals are continually studied and compared to humans due to the narrow genetic makeup possible. Empathy studies conducted on children and infants will also be an important aspect of my argument. Finally, I will discuss what happens if you are born without empathy. Which basically means putting someone in the category of being considered a psychopath. People can also be “good” or “bad” psychopaths. I'll go into more detail with that later. While I believe that empathy is innate, I think back to the rationalists discussed in class. An important figure like Descartes comes to mind. Descartes believed in the innateness of knowledge. The idea that we are born with certain ideas that help us make sense of our world. Do animals have empathy? This is an interesting question because most would......middle of paper......y. Science 18 May 2012: 336 (6083), 874-876. Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, Jean Decety and Peggy Mason. Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats. Science 9 December 2011:334(6061), 1427-1430Hare, R.D. (1999). Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.Huss, M. T. (2009). Forensic psychology: research, clinical practice and applications. Massachusetts, Malden: Blackwell Publishing.Bloom, P. (2013). Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil. New York, NY: Crown Publishers. Landow, G. P. (2008). The same is true for ourselves. Retrieved from http://www.victorianweb.org/science/darwin/sympathy.htmlHagerty, B.B. (2010). A neuroscientist discovers a dark secret. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127888976Fancher, R. E. & Rutherford, A. (2011) Pioneers of psychology. W. W. Norton and company.