Babies’ random choices become their preferences

When a baby reaches for one stuffed animal in a room filled with others just like it, that random choice is very bad news for those unpicked toys: the baby has likely just decided she doesn’t like what she didn’t choose. Researchers have known that adults build unconscious biases over a lifetime of choosing between things that are essentially the same, but finding that even babies do it demonstrates this way of justifying choice is fundamental to the human experience.