“Altruism comes into play when there is a little form of sacrifice or cost to the self and despite that one helps or assists the other to do them some good.” Dr. Andrew Meltzoff, Co-Director of the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS.) Are humans innately altruistic? Is altruism biological or is it learned? Can we discover the origin of altruism in the human brain? Together with Dr. Rodolfo Cortes Barragan, Dr. Meltzoff has performed experiments where toddlers are given a choice between helping others or taking a reward for themselves. Time and again, the toddlers choose altruism over selfishness. “You take the biological roots of recognizing others like me, add social interaction, and what flowers from that is altruism.” Babies begin to display altruistic tendencies at six months of age. In infancy, humans understand early that other humans are like them. As they begin to interact socially, that recognition develops into altruism. The desire to help originates from personal experience with struggling and then witnessing that same need for assistance in others. Dr. Meltzoff’s project seeks to determine how much of our desire to help others is built-in and how much arises from early social interactions. His research investigates how childhood experiences shape human minds and values, with the aim of developing ways to foster and enhance altruism.