Toddlers seem to know the difference between a whiner and somebody who is justifiably upset, and the young children often show less sympathy for crybabies, a new study shows.

For the research, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, studied 24 girls and 24 boys, ages 36 months to 39 months, as they each interacted with two adults.

During the interactions, one of the adults would show he was upset by frowning, whimpering or pouting. In each case, the adult was either reacting to something that would cause reasonable distress or overreacting to something much less serious.

Read more at LiveScience.