Do babies prefer someone who comforts a person over someone who harms a person, even when their movements are the same?

Details

The study contrasted actions directed toward a person with actions directed toward an inanimate object. Someone comforted the person and acted harmfully toward the object; the other individual reversed those actions. Because their bodily movements were the same, the reported preference suggests that the children distinguished more than movement alone: who or what received the action mattered.

This is evidence of a preference in the study setting, not proof that babies make adult-like moral judgments or reliably identify harmful people in everyday life. The abstract gives no sample size, detailed procedure, or estimate of the strength of the preference. The authors discuss a possible survival value in detecting people who cause harm, but that is an interpretation rather than a demonstrated evolutionary explanation.