Abstract
Infant cuteness can influence adult-infant interaction and has been shown to activate reward centres in the brain. In a previous study, we found men and women to be differentially sensitive to small differences in infant facial cuteness, with reproductive hormone status as the potential underlying cause. It is unclear, however, whether reproductive hormone status impacts on the aesthetic and incentive salience of infant faces.To address this question, we conducted two interlinked studies. We used static images of the same smiling and neutral-looking infant faces in both a rating task, in which participants had to rate the cuteness of infant faces (aesthetic salience - ‘liking’), and a key-press task, in which participants could prolong or shorten viewing time of infant faces by rapid alternating key-presses (incentive salience - ‘wanting’).In a first study, we compared the performance of men, women who are taking oral contraceptives, and regularly cycling women. In this study, we found a significant correlation between cuteness ratings within and between groups, which implies that participants had the same concept of cuteness. Cuteness ratings and effort to look at faces was linked regardless of sex and reproductive hormone status, in that cute faces were looked at for longer than less cute faces. A happy facial expression contributed only marginally to the incentive salience of the face.To explore the potential impact of reproductive hormone status in more detail, we followed a subset of regularly cycling women during the menstrual, follicular and luteal phases of their cycle. The aesthetic and incentive salience of infant faces did not change across the menstrual cycle.Our findings suggest that reproductive hormone status does not modulate the aesthetic and incentive value of infant faces.
Highlights
The ethologist Konrad Lorenz put forward the idea of the Kindchenschema as an innate neuro-cognitive releasing mechanism, which elicits a positive orientation towards an infant as well as care-giving behaviour [1]
The Kindchenschema is conceptualised as a biological mechanism, in a previous study we investigated the potential role of reproductive hormone status in cuteness processing
To explore the role of reproductive hormone status on aesthetic salience and incentive salience of infant faces, we first looked at men, and women taking and not taking oral contraceptives, and in a second study, we looked at regularly cycling women while in the menstrual, follicular and luteal phases of their cycle
Summary
The ethologist Konrad Lorenz put forward the idea of the Kindchenschema as an innate neuro-cognitive releasing mechanism, which elicits a positive orientation towards an infant as well as care-giving behaviour [1]. Our previous studies have established a potential link between reproductive hormone status and cuteness sensitivity, we currently do not know whether reproductive hormone status modulates the aesthetic salience (‘liking’) or the incentive salience (‘wanting’) of infant faces, and whether aesthetic salience and incentive salience of infant faces are linked. Both ‘liking’ (as assessed with a rating task) and ‘wanting’ (as assessed with a ‘pay per view task’) are dissociable components of the reward process and associated with separable neural structures; ‘liking’ is associated with fronto-temporal brain regions, whereas ‘wanting’ is associated with mesolimbic brain regions [10,11,12]. We explored the effect of positive emotions expressed by infants on ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’, using neutral-looking and smiling infant faces
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