Human Infant Faces Provoke Implicit Positive Affective Responses in Parents and Non-Parents Alike
Open accessAbstract
Human infants' complete dependence on adult caregiving suggests that mechanisms associated with adult responsiveness to infant cues might be deeply embedded in the brain. Behavioural and neuroimaging research has produced converging evidence for adults' positive disposition to infant cues, but these studies have not investigated directly the valence of adults' reactions, how they are moderated by biological and social factors, and if they relate to child caregiving. This study examines implicit affective responses of 90 adults toward faces of human and non-human (cats and dogs) infants and adults. Implicit reactions were assessed with Single Category Implicit Association Tests, and reports of childrearing behaviours were assessed by the Parental Style Questionnaire. The results showed that human infant faces represent highly biologically relevant stimuli that capture attention and are implicitly associated with positive emotions. This reaction holds independent of gender and parenthood status and is associated with ideal parenting behaviors.
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Facial photographs of dogs and cats elicit cuteness perception from humans but do not highly activate the brain's reward system, unlike facial photographs of human babies.
“those of dogs and cats elicit cuteness perception from humans but do not highly activate the brain's reward system [47,48].”
From Are dark-eyed dogs favoured by humans? Domestication as a potential driver of iris colour difference between dogs and wolves (2023) · cites this paper as [48]
The Introduction reports reward-related brain responses to human infant faces, and the Results find stronger positive implicit associations for human infant faces than for cat and dog faces. But the paper does not establish that cat and dog faces elicit cuteness perception or measure whether they activate the brain’s reward system; its comparison with animal faces was behavioural, not neural. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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- Authors
- Senese, V. P., De Falco, S., Bornstein, M. H., Caria, A., Buffolino, S., & Venuti, P.
- Affiliations
- University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" (IT)
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- University of Trento (IT)
- Corresponding author
- Senese, Vincenzo Paolo
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2013-11-25
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- e80379
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3840010
- OpenAlex
- W2011894461
- Cited by
- 96
- References
- 86
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 3.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- public-domain
- creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (vor)
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Institutional Research Information System (Università degli Studi di Trento) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Archivio Istituzionale della Ricerca - Università degli Studi della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Pharmacy › Infant Health and Development
- Keywords
- infant faces, positive emotions, parental care, parental styles, dogs and cats, attentional capture, parental status, gender differences, implicit associations
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Analysis of Variance, Animals, Behavior, Cats, Cues, Dogs, Face, Humans, Infant, Parents, Sex Factors
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