There’s been an accepted consensus that toddlers are innately selfish creatures (and oftentimes, straight-up assholes), but new research shows they may in fact be hardwired with a moral compass after all.

Psychologists Lara Aknin, Kiley Hamlin and Elizabeth Dunn have thought about the “warm glow” that humans experience when we do nice things for others, and wondered how early in life that feeling emerges. To examine this, they performed a research experiment with a group of 23-month-olds, putting on a puppet show and studying their facial expressions as different acts of giving occurred.

First, each toddler was given eight treats. Then he watched as the experimenter gave one treat to the puppet. Next, he was asked to give the puppet a “found” treat—not one of his own. Finally, the toddler was asked to give one his own treats to the puppet, making a personal sacrifice.

They found that the toddlers were happier when giving treats than they were when receiving them. And they were even more happy when giving away their own treats than when giving away a treat from the researcher. The findings were published in a paper titled “Giving Leads to Happiness in Young Children” in PLOS ONE. “Evidence that prosocial behavior [which includes helping and sharing] leads to happiness in toddlers suggests that the experience of positive emotions may contribute to the widespread cooperation characteristic of humans,” the report reads.

In the past, research has primarily focused on the role of experience in moral outcomes: What makes a kid a bully? What makes a child kindhearted? But the study supports the possibility that humans may have evolved to find giving rewarding.

Hamlin, the head of the Centre for Infant Cognition at the University of British Columbia, has looked for the earliest signs of morality in humans, studying children as young as 3 months old in her previous research. “If we consider children as moral blank slates, we might be painting the wrong developmental picture,” she said. “We might be designing the wrong interventions.”

Aknin, Hamlin and Dunn shared their findings with Reddit’s Psychology community, and answered questions about the report and other child development issues in an Ask Me Anything (AMA) discussion.

Here are some highlights:

On the age kids start showing happiness from giving

On how adults can help kids internalize desired values

On why people can be wired for generosity but still end up as jerks

On whether toddlers can take the perspective of others

On babies responding to other babies

See the full discussion in the original Reddit thread.