The Gestation of Virtue: An Examination of How Experiences in the Womb May Build the Moral Self

Abstract

This project represents an empirical test of the Co-Investigator’s “Life is a Wonder” model of pregnancy (Barragan Sanchez, 2007). The Life is a Wonder model posits that, if an expecting mother construes her coming baby as a gift, they she will attempt to “interact” with the fetus in order to welcome her or him to the social world. This “invitation to be born” comes in the form of massages that the mother carries out whenever she feels that the baby moving in her belly. In anecdotal experiences in her training sessions with expecting mothers, the Co-Investigator has found that reciprocating the baby’s movement causes the baby to continue to move, and that the more the baby moves, the more emotionally attuned she or he is during the first few years of life. Over the long term, these in-utero experiences with reciprocation are thought to build a self that is responsive, empathic, and committed to other humans. As such, this project aims to scientifically test whether it may be possible that the massage that some mothers do on their abdomens in response to their babies’ movements may drive the emergence of the moral self.