To date, research on infant face processing has focused on the appraisal of physical features, but investigations of the effects of sex and parental status on infant emotional expressions have been less prevalent. The present study sought to fill this gap by investigating the effects of sex and parental status on the assessment of infant emotional faces using a community sample of 105 participants (55 female) who were split into 2 groups according to parental status: 53 parents (28 female) comprised those who had a child aged <10 years, and 52 nonparents (27 female) comprised those who did not have children and did not work in a childcare environment. A total of 116 infant faces were presented under 5 emotional conditions (positive, muted positive, neutral, muted negative, and negative). The participants were instructed to rate each facial expression with regard to 3 aspects: pleasure, activation, and intensity. The results revealed a significant effect of group, with nonparents perceiving happy and sad infant faces as more intense than parents. We hypothesize that because parents are frequently exposed to intense emotions of their children, their range of intensity may be wider. Therefore, the parents tend to assign a lower intensity to infant emotional faces. In addition, no differences were found between men and women, regardless of parental status, in any of the aspects that were evaluated (pleasure, activation, and intensity) for any emotional expressions (sad, happy, and neutral). This corroborates findings that mothers and fathers are also often more similar than different in their cognitive responses to children.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.