Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 135 (2015) 56–71

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Journal of Experimental ChildPsychology

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ jecp

Adults’ responsiveness to children’s facialexpressions

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2015.02.0060022-0965/� 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

⇑ Corresponding author.E-mail address: caradhye@oakland.edu (C. Aradhye).

Chinmay Aradhye ⇑, Jennifer Vonk, Danielle AridaDepartment of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI 48309, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 9 July 2014Revised 13 February 2015

Keywords:Young children’s expressionsEmotionResponsivenessCutenessNurtureParenting

We investigated the effect of young children’s (hereafterchildren’s) facial expressions on adult responsiveness. In Study 1,131 undergraduate students from a midsized university in themidwestern United States rated children’s images and videos withsmiling, crying, or neutral expressions on cuteness, likelihood toadopt, and participants’ experienced distress. Looking times atimages and videos along with perception of cuteness, likelihoodto adopt, and experienced distress using 10-point Likert scaleswere measured. Videos of smiling children were rated as cuterand more likely to be adopted and were viewed for longer timescompared with videos of crying children, which evoked moredistress. In Study 2, we recorded responses from 101 of the sameparticipants in an online survey measuring gender role identity,empathy, and perspective taking. Higher levels of femininity (asmeasured by Bem’s Sex Role Inventory) predicted higher ‘‘likelyto adopt’’ ratings for crying images. These findings indicate thatadult perception of children and motivation to nurture are affectedby both children’s facial expressions and adult characteristics andbuild on existing literature to demonstrate that children may useexpressions to manipulate the motivations of even non-kin adultsto direct attention toward and perhaps nurture young children.

� 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Introduction

Human children experience the longest period of dependency on caregivers of all known species(Bogin, 1997). A child’s ability to communicate with potential caregivers, therefore, is critical for sur-vival (Bogin, 1997; Trivers, 1974) and has been studied extensively. Prior research has focused onthree distinct aspects of children’s communication: gaze, vocalization, and facial expression (Yale,Messinger, Cobo-Lewis, & Delgado, 2003), with facial expression considered the most importantaspect of communication (Colonnesi, Zijlstra, van der Zande, & Bögels, 2012; Messinger, 2002). Theliterature on children’s facial expression has focused primarily on the accurate detection ofexpressions, and the connection between emotions and expressions identified via specific facialpatterns (Ekman & Rosenberg, 1997), whereas parents’ perception of a child’s facial expressions andthe resulting effect on parents’ behavior have received relatively less attention (Bolzani-Dinehartet al., 2005; Braungart-Rieker, Garwood, Powers, & Wang, 2001). This disparity may exist becausethe dominant perspective in the developmental literature holds that facial expressions function as‘‘feedback’’ signals of children’s emotional states rather than evoking behavioral motives in observers,thereby ignoring the role of observers in the function of children’s expressions (see Ekman & Fridlund,1987; Fridlund, 1997) and children’s varying abilities to manipulate the behaviors of observers.Researchers adopting a behavioral–ethological approach (Dawkins & Krebs, 1978; Fridlund, 1997)have proposed species-specific signals that evoke behavioral motives in the receivers—in this caseadults.

Here we focused on the effects of children’s expressions on unrelated young adults’ attentivenessand motivation to nurture. We argue that (a) children’s expressions of emotion affect adultsdifferently based on individual characteristics of the adults such as empathy and femininity; (b) bothmale and female adults are motivated to attend more to smiling children than to crying children andindicate greater desire to nurture smiling children; and (c) children’s expressions can be understood asa means by which nonrelated adults can be manipulated into providing attention and care to children.

Previous research suggests that children’s ability to express emotions is critical in communicatingwith adult caregivers. The facial expressions of smiling and crying are understood as responses topositive and negative stimuli, respectively (Camras, 1992), communicating the emotional state ofthe child (Ekman & Fridlund, 1987; Fridlund, 1997), and conveying the child’s need for resources topotential caregivers (Trivers, 1974). Yale and colleagues (2003) compared the sequence and frequencyof gaze, vocalizations, and facial expressions used by children toward their mothers. They found thatgaze and vocalizations coordinated more strongly with facial expressions than with each other. Thisfinding suggests a central coordinating role for facial expressions in children’s communication.Power, Hildebrandt, and Fitzgerald (1982) found that children’s expressions affected adults’ attentionto children, cuteness perception, and cardiac acceleration, indicating that children’s expressions affectimportant aspects of adult physiology, cognition, and behavior. Although the expressions ofadolescents and adults likely evoke similar responses, the effective use of expressions as a means ofcommunication is likely most important for infants and young children. Because human childrenare dependent on caregiving parents, the care they receive from parents can be vital to development(Bogin, 1997; Geary & Bjorklund, 2000), making potential manipulation of caretaking behaviors animportant developmental mechanism. Here, we extended previous findings to examine the effect ofchildren’s expressions on adult nurturing motivations along with more negative outcomes such asadults’ distress (Gondoli & Silverberg, 1997).

Children’s emotional expressiveness is positively associated with increased attachment with care-givers—an important aspect of parental caregiving. For instance, children’s ability to respond appropri-ately to affect-evoking stimuli (affect regulation) through facial cues predicts child–parent attachmentover time (Braungart-Rieker et al., 2001; Cohn & Campbell, 1992; Cohn, Campbell, & Ross, 1991).Furthermore, Braungart-Rieker and colleagues (2001) compared infant crying and smiling reactionsin the still-face paradigm (Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1979) where parents abruptlyfreeze their faces, interrupting their expressions toward the infant, and then reintroduce expressionslater. Children typically respond with crying to the face-freezing and with smiling on reintroduction ofmore dynamic cues. Braungart-Rieker and colleagues found that children with fewer crying responses

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and more smiling responses at 4 months of age showed more secure attachment at the 1-year markcompared with children with more neutral instances (when there was no reaction) and more cryinginstances (when there were less appropriate responses). Children’s ability to respond appropriately,therefore, was related to attachment, insinuating that the children’s appropriate emotional reactionsengendered greater positive regard and bonding from adults.

Although parents may be uniquely motivated to respond to children given facial similarities thatpromote kin recognition (Platek, Burch, Panyavin, Wasserman, & Gallup, 2002), a substantial literaturehas studied non-kin adults’ (hereafter adults’) perception of children’s facial cues (Lobmaier,Sprengelmeyer, Wiffen, & Perrett, 2010; Sprengelmeyer et al., 2009; Sternglanz, Gray, & Murakami,1977). This focus has been useful in understanding basic communication mechanisms such as adults’perception of underlying children’s emotions and cuteness as well as adults’ neural activation(Sprengelmeyer et al., 2009). For example, Bolzani-Dinehart and colleagues (2005) compared adults’ratings of natural and digitally modified images of smiling and crying children on emotional intensitydisplayed from facial expressions. They found that adults use specific cues such as eye constriction, lipmovement, and mouth opening to determine the intensity of specific emotions. Studying adult per-ception of children’s expressions can provide insights into the function of children’s expressionsand can contribute to the understanding of evolutionary mechanisms involved in the child–adultrelationship (Fridlund, 1997; Schmidt & Cohn, 2001). Furthermore, research on adults’ perception ofchildren’s expressions indicates that adults might have a general responsiveness to unrelated chil-dren’s facial cues and expressions such that unrelated children also evoke caretaking mechanisms(Ainsworth, 1979; Bell & Ainsworth, 1972; Kringelbach et al., 2008; Sprengelmeyer et al., 2009) andsmiling and crying convey positive and negative feelings, respectively (Hildebrandt, 1983;Messinger, Fogel, & Dickson, 2001). It is noteworthy that these signals of emotional states were recog-nized and responded to by unrelated adults.

Because facial resemblance acts as an investment motivator in parents, especially in men (Volk &Quinsey, 2002), such that one’s own kin may evoke a stronger protective response over and above ageneral protective reaction toward young children (Sanefuji, Ohgami, & Hashiya, 2007), the effectsof a child’s emotional expressions on nurturing behavior could be most pronounced when respondingto one’s own child. However, consistent with the idea that children’s expressions are recognized andresponded to by non-kin adults as well (Glocker et al., 2009a,b; Kurdahi Badr & Abdallah, 2001), weargue that mechanisms for manipulating adults’ motivations to engage in caretaking should be targetgeneral rather than aimed specifically at kin only. Human societies are clearly unique in the degree ofshared caretaking given child-care facilities and adoption practices; thus, human children may beuniquely geared to soliciting care from non-kin as well as kin. In support of this idea, using functionalmagnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Glocker and colleagues (2009b) found that nulliparous womenshowed increased brain activity in the mesocorticolimbic system (reward center) when viewingunfamiliar, digitally enhanced cute children’s faces. Similarly, Kringelbach and colleagues (2008) usedmagnetoencephalography (MEG) to identify specific activation in the medial orbitofrontal cortex(involved in rewarding behavior) when exposed to unfamiliar children’s faces but not when exposedto adult faces, suggesting that adult responsiveness mechanisms may be activated even by non-kinchildren, although possibly to a weaker extent (Leibenluft, Gobbini, Harrison, & Haxby, 2004). Thus,the general mechanism by which children can use expressions to manipulate the behavior of adultsis not limited to caregivers. We wished to find further support for this general mechanism byexamining responsiveness in adults generally. However, the possibility of enhanced effects in parentsspecifically cannot be ruled out.

We attempted to assess adult responsiveness using a broad spectrum of relevant measures.Cuteness is one of the most studied aspects in adults’ perception of children. The fact that youngchildren are widely perceived as ‘‘cute’’ is one attribute that has endeared them to adults generally.Cuteness is regarded as an evolutionary fitness signal displayed by children (Lorenz, 1943;Sprengelmeyer et al., 2009). Humans have also been known to find non-kin children cute (Karraker& Stern, 1990; Luo, Li, & Lee, 2011) and to find other species cute (Gould, 1980) based on bodyproportions and patterns, indicating that cuteness perception extends beyond one’s kin. Perceptionof cuteness triggers neurological (‘‘releasing’’) mechanisms in adults (Kringelbach et al., 2008), leadingto behavioral ‘‘fixed action patterns’’ (Lorenz, 1937), and is associated with nurturing motivations

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(Glocker et al., 2009a, 2009b; Sternglanz et al., 1977). In the current study, we used cuteness percep-tion along with a ‘‘likely to adopt’’ measure that gauged adults’ adoption preferences (Platek et al.,2002; Volk, Darrell-Cheng, & Marini, 2010; Volk & Quinsey, 2002) as proxies for motivations fornurturing. We anticipated that cuteness would be influenced by children’s expressions of emotionwhen the physical features of children were held constant by balancing the emotion expressionsacross the same children, thereby allowing us to separate the effects of emotion from physical featureson cuteness ratings.

Individuals may also experience negative affect from children’s facial expressions. Langlois, Ritter,Casey, and Sawin (1995) found that mothers’ perception of children’s attractiveness predicted caretak-ing behaviors and attitudes toward the children. Parents’ sensitivity to children’s distress predictsattachment between children and mothers (Leerkes, Blankson, & O’Brien, 2009; Mesman, Oster, &Camras, 2012) such that mothers’ sensitivity to children’s distress is likely to result in bettersocial–emotional attachment for children (McElwain & Booth-LaForce, 2006). Thus, we measuredfeelings of distress reported by adults as they viewed different children’s expressions. In naturalconditions, feelings of distress at a child’s negative feelings may motivate the adult to potentiallyremedy the cause of distress.

Attention is a more direct measure that has been used to gauge preference for children’s faces(Gould, 1980; Hildebrandt, 1983). Hildebrandt and Fitzgerald (1978), Hildebrandt and Fitzgerald(1981) tested whether adults preferred children’s pictures to adult pictures and found that adultswere more likely to smile while looking toward a child than while looking toward an adult. Otherstudies have also found a general adult visual preference for children’s faces compared with adultfaces (Berman, Cooper, Mansfield, Shields, & Abplanalp, 1975; Fullard & Reiling, 1976). Power andcolleagues (1982) found that smiling children were viewed for longer times than crying childrenand that children rated as cuter were viewed for longer times than those rated as less cute. Given thatattention is used to gauge preference, we used attention, measured as looking time, toward childrendisplaying different facial expressions as an implicit measure of preference.

We hypothesized that smiling children would be rated as cuter, and more adoptable, relative tocrying and neutral children. We also expected that crying children would evoke more distress com-pared with neutral and smiling children. Smiling children, therefore, should be viewed for longertimes than crying and neutral children. We predicted that each of these behavioral outcomes shouldbe influenced in similar ways across related and unrelated adults by the expression of children in bothstill images and dynamic videos. However, we also believed that individuals would differ to somedegree in the extent to which they were responsive to cues such as children’s needs. For example,caretaking has been differentially associated with men and women (Platek et al., 2002) along with dif-ferences in physiological responses to viewing children (Power et al., 1982). However, although sexdifferences might predict differential responses to children’s expressions, we believe that characteris-tics associated with masculine and feminine features of both male and female personalities might playa stronger role than sex in mediating associations between children’s expressions and adult behaviors(Renk et al., 2003). Previous studies have found that femininity predicts empathy and perspective tak-ing regardless of the sex of the participant (Vonk, Mayhew, & Zeigler-Hill, in press). Thus, we includedBem’s Sex Role Inventory (BSRI; Bem, 1974) to provide assessments of traditional gender roles of mas-culinity and femininity rather than measuring sex alone (Geary, 2010). In general, feminine character-istics as defined by the BSRI should be more strongly associated with nurturing feelings, as indicatedby higher likely to adopt and cuteness ratings, compared with masculine characteristics.

Potentially mediating the sex difference in responses to children’s emotional states are the psycho-logical characteristics of empathy and perspective taking. Females generally report higher levels ofempathy (Auyeung et al., 2009; Carroll & Yung, 2006; Voracek & Dressler, 2006; Wakabayashi,Sasaki, & Ogawa, 2012) and exhibit slightly superior perspective-taking skills (Alaerts, Nackaerts,Meyns, Swinnen, & Wenderoth, 2011; Baron-Cohen, 2002), suggesting that they may be more accurateat assessing the emotional states of even young children and, thus, more attuned to comforting chil-dren in distress. Attachment theorists have emphasized the role of empathy in caregiving motivations,highlighting the importance of the parent’s capacity to see things from the child’s perspective(Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton, 1974). This capacity, perspective taking, may produce feelings of empathyleading to greater sensitivity to children’s feelings and, therefore, better caregiving. Because individual

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differences in observing adults’ capacity for empathy could affect their motivation to nurture(Psychogiou, Daley, Thompson, & Sonuga-Barke, 2008), we included Baron-Cohen’s widely usedEmpathy Quotient (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004) and Davis’s (1983) popular InterpersonalReactivity Index to measure empathy levels of adult participants. To assess perspective taking, weused the popular Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, &Plumb, 2001). We hypothesized that individuals higher in empathy and perspective taking, regardlessof sex, would show stronger effects of children’s emotion expressions on their viewing time andmotivations to adopt. Although adults’ ratings of children expressing various emotions have beenstudied previously, no prior studies have examined the individual characteristics of adults predictingtheir responsiveness or used such a complete list of measures of nurturing motivations.

Study 1

Method

ParticipantsThe participants were recruited from the undergraduate participant pool of the psychology depart-

ment at Oakland University. A total of 131 participants completed the looking time task; however 6participants (2 men) failed to complete all of the Likert scales, thereby leaving 125 participantswho completed all other rating scales. All 131 participants (96 women) were 18 years or older andwithout any serious visual impairment. Each student received course credit equivalent to an hour’sworth of participation.

MaterialsA total of 45 images of 15 young children (three expressions for each child: smiling, crying, and

neutral) were obtained from consenting parents or relatives of children. The children ranged in agefrom 1 to 3 years (7 girls). The 45 images were divided into three sets (A, B, and C) of 15 images each.Each child’s three photos were assigned to three different sets, with a different emotion expressionbeing depicted in each set. Within each of the three sets, each emotion was expressed five times—involving a different child each time. The photographs were presented in an approximately 4 � 4-inchframe size on the computer screen. Only pictures from well-lit backgrounds, cropped to the child’sface, were used. Backgrounds were natural (i.e., not edited or standardized). Children represented bothsexes and various ethnic backgrounds. The only restrictions were on image quality and orientation andfit with the appropriate emotional category. By using images of different emotions from the samechildren, we controlled for differential cuteness across children such that any effect of expressionwould be independent of inherent cuteness of the child. By exposing participants to only one imageof each child, we eliminated any effects of prior exposure or response history to a particular child.

In addition, nine copyright-free videos containing three different expressions (3 � 3) were obtainedfrom publicly shared online videos. These videos showed young children smiling, crying, or displayinga neutral expression. The children depicted in the videos ranged in age from 3 weeks to 2 years, andthe videos included both male and female children, although the sex of 4 children was unknown. Thevideos were edited in 10-s loops to last for a total of approximately 3 min.

A desktop computer with E-Prime software installed was used to display pictures and videos on a19-inch flat-screen monitor. A total of five rating scales were used for the study: one each for cutenessand sweetness in Part 2 of the laboratory experiment, followed by likelihood of adopting, level ofdistress, and level of uneasiness. Each scale had 15 ratings—one for each of the 15 images (or videos)shown to participants—on a Likert scale format from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest).

ProcedureFor the experimental tasks, participants were brought into the testing room individually and seated

in front of a computer. Participants read instructions from a sheet of paper given to them at thebeginning of the experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to view one of the three sets, eachcontaining 15 images and 9 videos. The images (Part 1) and videos (Part 2) were both displayed in

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random order without replacement using E-Prime software. The order of presentation of image tasksand video tasks was counterbalanced in each set across participants to control for any sequence or car-ryover effects.

Part 1: Looking time measure. Each participant was shown the assigned set of images. Participantsbegan by selecting an orienting button on the screen with the mouse to begin the session after theyhad read the instructions. Participants were given a practice trial with three copyright-free images(a cat, a dog, and a horse) obtained from Google Images to ensure that they understood the task.Participants used the spacebar to proceed through the experiment. Participants were instructed tolook at the images appearing on the screen. When they wanted to change the image on the screen,they pressed the spacebar. Pressing the spacebar displayed the rest of the 15 images on the screenone at a time. Once the actual experiment began, their looking time was measured as the intervalbetween two spacebar presses, as measured by the E-Prime software, measuring the exposure timeof each individual child image.

Part 2: Rating scales. Following the assessment of looking time to each image, the images were pre-sented again. This time, participants were administered a cuteness rating scale on which they ratedeach child image for its cuteness. The scale had ratings from 1 to 10, with 1 being the least cuteand 10 being the cutest. This was followed by rating a randomized presentation of the same set forsweetness on a similar scale. This measure was included to measure internal consistency of cutenessratings, in other words, to test whether the related construct of sweetness would obtain similar scoresas cuteness on the same set of faces. Finally, participants rated their hypothetical likelihood ofadopting each child in the set in the same format of a Likert-type scale.

Part 3: Video viewing time. Participants were asked to watch nine videos, three belonging to each cry-ing, neutral, and smiling child condition. Each video was looped to last for approximately 3 min byrepeating a 10-s expression clip. Participants were asked to click and stop the video when they didnot wish to watch it further. The duration of time for which each video was viewed by the participantwas measured as the viewing time of the participant.

Part 4: Video ratings of distress. Participants were once again shown the videos they rated earlier andwere asked to rate their own level of distress while watching the videos, presented in random order.They could stop the videos whenever they wanted, as in Part 3. The ratings ranged from 1 (no distress)to 10 (highest distress level tolerable) and were to be collected in real time as participants watched thevideo. Distress ratings were followed by ratings on uneasiness, using the same scale, for calculatinginternal consistency.

Results

CorrelationsCuteness ratings for neutral, crying, and smiling images were correlated with corresponding sweet-

ness ratings (rs = .78, .80, and .71, respectively), and distress ratings for neutral, crying, and smilingvideos were correlated with uneasiness ratings for corresponding videos (rs = .72, .70, and .59, respec-tively). Therefore, we considered only cuteness and distress, along with likelihood to adopt, in the fol-lowing analyses rather than also including sweetness and uneasiness as variables. Probability valuesfor repeated-measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) are reported with Greenhouse–Geisser correc-tions to avoid errors due to sphericity violations.

Effects of emotion expressionsLooking times. We conducted repeated-measures ANOVA on looking times with expression (crying vs.neutral vs. smiling) and medium (images vs. videos) as within-participants factors and sex of the par-ticipants as a between-participants factor. We observed a significant difference in looking times acrossexpressions, F(1.445, 182.031) = 69.365, p < .001, g2 = .36, but there was also a significant interactionbetween expression and medium, F(1, 126) = 4.429, p < .001, g2 = .20, indicating that the effect of

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expression on looking times differed between images and videos. We then conducted ANOVAs sepa-rately for videos and images with expression and sex as factors and found the effect of expression to besignificant only for videos, F(1.4, 179.170) = 3.849, p = .04, g2 = .03 (see Fig. 1). Planned simple con-trasts indicated that looking times for crying versus smiling videos differed significantly, F(1,128) = 5.51, p = .02, g2 = .04, whereas the difference between crying and neutral images was not sig-nificant, F(1, 128) = 2.15, p = .15. Looking times also did not differ significantly between smiling andneutral children, F(1, 128) = 3.48, p = .07. There were no significant effects or interactions involvingsex in any of the analyses.

Cuteness. A repeated-measures ANOVA of perceived cuteness for images with expression as awithin-participants factor and sex as a between-participants factor revealed a significant effect ofexpression, F(1.911, 237.34) = 106.24, p < .001, g2 = .46. Within-participants simple contrastsindicated that neutral children images (M = 4.97, SEM = 0.19), F(1, 124) = 31.07, p < .001, g2 = .20,and smiling children images (M = 6.90, SEM = 0.18), F(1, 124) = 171.36, p < .001, g2 = .58, receivedsignificantly higher cuteness ratings than crying children images (M = 3.85, SEM = 0.18) for bothmen and women. Cuteness ratings were also higher for smiling children than for neutral children,F(1, 124) = 93.83, p < .001.

Likelihood to adopt. A repeated-measures ANOVA of ‘‘likely to adopt’’ ratings with expression as awithin-participants factor and sex as a between-participants factor revealed that likely to adoptratings also differed significantly across expressions, F(1.59, 198.27) = 133.52, p < .001, g2 = .52. Thepattern was the same as for cuteness ratings; within-participants simple contrasts revealed thatneutral children images (M = 5.46, SEM = 0.20), F(1, 124) = 86.44, p < .001, g2 = .41, and smilingchildren images (M = 7.16, SEM = 0.21), F(1, 124) = 178.05, p < .001, g2 = .59, received significantlyhigher likely to adopt ratings than crying children images (M = 3.75, SEM = 0.21) for both men andwomen. Likely to adopt ratings were also higher for smiling children than for neutral children, F(1,124) = 91.77, p < .001.

To determine whether emotion had an effect on likely to adopt ratings above and beyond that ofcuteness, we conducted an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with cuteness ratings as a covariateand still obtained a significant effect of emotion, F(1.61, 197.71) = 103.18, p < .001, g2 = .46. Thus,the effects of emotion appear to convey information in addition to that provided by differentialcuteness perceptions.

Fig. 1. Average looking times (in milliseconds) for expression by medium.

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Distress. A repeated-measures ANOVA of distress ratings during videos with expression as a within-participants factor and sex as a between-participants factor revealed that different expressions elicitedsignificantly different distress ratings from participants, F(1.19, 141.89) = 131.09, p < .001, g2 = .52.Within-participants simple contrasts revealed that crying children images (M = 6.40, SEM = 0.26) wererated as significantly more distressing than neutral children images (M = 2.35, SEM = 0.18), F(1, 119) =154.54, p < .001, g2 = .57, and smiling children images (M = 2.02, SEM = 0.20), F(1, 119) = 130.99,p < .001, g2 = .52, for both men and women. Distress ratings were also higher for neutral children thanfor smiling children, F(1, 124) = 5.76, p = .02.

Discussion

The results of Study 1 established that even non-kin adults are affected by the expressions por-trayed by children. Not surprisingly, adults rated smiling and neutral children as cuter, more adopt-able, and less distressing than crying children. When viewing videos, but not images, individualsviewed smiling children for longer times than they viewed crying children. It is probable that an evenstronger effect would be observed for live children. These results affirm our hypothesis that children’sexpressions elicit differing motivations to nurture even in nonrelatives. Although we hypothesizedthat this mechanism of children’s manipulation of adult behavior should be general rather than speci-fic to kin, we also hypothesized that susceptibility to such manipulation might vary as a function ofadults’ individual levels of nurturing qualities. Study 2 was designed to assess this aim.

Study 2

Having established that the expressions of unrelated children affected the nurturing motivations ofyoung adults, we wished to examine further differences in these adults that might better predict theirresponses to children’s expressions. Past research has shown that empathy and perspective taking aresignificant predictors of individual differences in the quality of caregiving to individuals with disabili-ties (Giesbrecht, 2008; Lobchuk, 2006), but we predicted that the same would be true of caregiving fortypically developed children. Consistent with this prediction, empathy and perspective taking werealso associated with the number of projected causes and caregiving strategies given by first- toseventh-grade children in response to crying infants (Catherine & Schonert-Reichl, 2011). Here, weassessed the relationship among femininity, masculinity, empathy, and perspective taking and adults’responsiveness to children’s facial expressions using the outcomes measured in Study 1.

Method

ParticipantsA total of 101 (78 women) of the participants who completed Study 1 participated in this study.

They received additional credit for the research requirement in their entry-level psychology course.

MeasuresFollowing participation in the lab experiment, participants were directed to a secure online survey

site (http://www.surveymonkey.com), where they completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI)developed by Davis (1983), the Empathy Quotient (EQ; Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004), Readingthe Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET; Baron-Cohen et al., 2001), and Bem’s Sex Role Inventory (BSRI; Bem,1974), respectively, to allow us to assess empathy, perspective taking, and gender roles as predictorsfor differing levels of emotional responsiveness.

The IRI (Davis, 1983) was designed to assess four separate but related measures of empathy (theability to experience what another is feeling) with four subscales: fantasy (the ability to place oneselfinto the feelings and actions of fictional characters in books, movies, and plays; e.g., ‘‘I really getinvolved with the feelings of the characters in a novel’’; a = .77), perspective taking (the ability to takethe point of view of other people in daily life; e.g., ‘‘I try to look at everybody’s side of a disagreementbefore I make a decision’’; a = .69), empathic concern (the ability to feel compassion for others; e.g.,

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‘‘When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective toward them’’; a = .78), andpersonal distress (one’s own discomfort in reaction to others’ emotions; e.g., ‘‘When I see someone gethurt, I tend to remain calm’’; a = .64). Each scale consisted of seven items that participants rated towhat degree the statements described themselves (from not at all like me to very much like me).

The EQ (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004) assesses self-reported empathy. It contains 40empathy items and 20 filler/control items. Examples of statements include ‘‘I can pick up quickly ifsomeone says one thing but means another’’ and reverse scored items such as ‘‘Seeing people crydoesn’t really upset me.’’ Participants were required to rate their level of agreement to each statementon a 4-point scale ranging from definitely agree to definitely disagree (a = .88).

The RMET (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001) involves inferring the mental state of a person solely from theinformation in photographs of the person’s eyes. It consists of 36 images of the part of the faceshowing both eyes alone. Participants are asked to choose the best response to describe the feelingor thought projected in the image from four alternatives. Participants select the word describingthe correct state of mind from four options (e.g., dominant, guilty, friendly, and horrified).Participants receive 1 point for each correct response. The sum of all correct answers indicatesproficiency at the task (a = .71). The RMET has been shown to have adequate psychometric propertieswith typical adults (Girli, 2014; Vellante et al., 2013).

The BSRI (Bem, 1974) was designed to categorize individuals as masculine, feminine, ‘‘androgy-nous,’’ or ‘‘undifferentiated’’ on the basis of personality characteristics. It can also be scored to yielda continuous variable for femininity and masculinity, as was done here, and is appropriate for bothsexes. The masculinity scale and femininity scale contain 20 personality characteristics each. Forexample, the masculinity scale contains items such as aggressive, ambitious, and competitive, andthe femininity scale contains items such as affectionate, gentle, and tender. Neutral characters arethose that are applicable to either of the groups such as likeable, jealous, and moody. The BSRI asksthe person to indicate on a 7-point scale how well each of the 60 masculine, feminine, and neutralpersonality characteristics describes himself or herself. The scale ranges from 1 (never or almost nevertrue) to 7 (always or almost always true) and is labeled at each end point. Internal consistency istypically more than acceptable (Bem, 1974). We scored continuous measures of masculine andfeminine qualities (a = .82).

Results

We calculated bivariate correlations to investigate zero-order associations between predictor vari-ables (sex, femininity, masculinity, empathy, and perspective taking) from Study 2 and outcome vari-ables (looking time, cuteness ratings of images, likelihood to adopt, and distress ratings of videos)from Study 1. We found that ‘‘likely to adopt’’ ratings on neutral and smiling images were moderatelycorrelated with the IRI empathic concern subscale (r = .45, p < .001, and r = .48, p < .001, respectively)and with femininity from the BSRI (r = .44, p < .001, and r = .46, p < .001, respectively), indicating thatpeople high in empathic concern and femininity considered neutral and smiling children to be moreadoptable (see Table S1 in online supplementary material).

We conducted hierarchical linear regressions with image looking time, cuteness ratings, videolooking time, and distress ratings as the outcomes for each expression and the following as predictorsin the model: RMET scores, EQ scores, continuous masculinity and femininity scores from the BSRI,and scores on the IRI subscales (perspective taking [PT], fantasy [F], empathic concern [EC], andpersonal distress [PD]). Sex of the participant was entered on Step 1, separate scores for masculinityand femininity for each participant were entered on Step 2, and all two-way interactions betweenmasculinity, femininity, and sex, along with the other predictors, on Step 3, with the three-wayinteraction among sex, masculinity, and femininity being entered on Step 4. We report the regressioncoefficients for all variables at each step of the models in Table 1. To control for the family-wise errorrate, alpha was set to p = .003 for all analyses.

ImagesThe only significant finding for images involved the likely to adopt measure and crying faces.

Masculinity and femininity interacted to predict likely to adopt ratings for crying faces (b = .38,

Table 1Hierarchical multiple regression analyses of the eyes test (RMET), Empathy Quotient (EQ), Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), andInterpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) perspective taking (PT), fantasy (F), empathic concern (EC), and personal distress (PD) subscaleswith looking time, cuteness ratings, and ‘‘likely to adopt’’ ratings for images and looking time and distress ratings for videos as theoutcome.

LT Image C LT Image N LT Image S LT Video C LT Video N LT Video S

Step 1 �.00 �.00 .00 �.01 .00 .32*

Sex �.09 �.08 �.11 �.14 �.11 �.21*

Step 2 .02 �.02 �.01 �.01 .04 .09*

Masculinity �.02 �.02 .06 �.11 .05 .17Femininity .21 �.09 .07 .02 .22* .18Step 3 �.02 �.08 �.06 .14 .12 .16*

Masculinity � Femininity �.02 �.01 .08 .01 �.26* .02Masculinity � Sex .77 .56 .13 �.09 �.88 �.83Femininity � Sex �.56 �.63 �.37 �.14 .46 .85

Eyes test �.02 �.06 �.11 .14 �.24 �.15Empathy Quotient �.07 .04 .07 �.49* .18 .08Perspective taking �.00 �.03 �.05 �.09 �.26 .25Empathic concern .21 .22 .19 .20 �.23 .24Fantasy .09 �.01 �.06 .10 �.16 �.05Personal distress �.05 �.01 �.12 �.28* �.12 �.11

Step 4 �.03 �.07 �.04 .01 .11 .24**

Masculinity � Femininity � Sex .38 .80 1.03 .20 .21 �1.65**

Note. Numbers represent standardized betas and adjusted R2 values. C, crying; N, neutral; S, smiling; LT, looking time.* p < .05.

** p < .01.

C. Aradhye et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 135 (2015) 56–71 65

t = 3.49, p = .001). Simple slopes tests were conducted to determine the effects of femininity onindividuals both low and high in masculinity separately. Those low in masculinity (b = .47, t = 3.49,p = .001) and those high in masculinity (b = .55, t = 3.49, p = .001) reported a higher likelihood to adoptfor crying children’s images if they were high in femininity compared with if they were low infemininity (although the effect of femininity was more pronounced for individuals high inmasculinity, as seen in Fig. 2). Masculine individuals were least likely to want to adopt crying childrencompared with feminine and androgynous individuals.

VideosThe only significant effect for videos involved looking time for smiling children. Masculinity

interacted with femininity and sex to influence looking time at smiling videos (b = –1.60, t = –3.16,

Fig. 2. Predicted values for ‘‘likely to adopt’’ ratings. The values illustrate the interaction of femininity (Fem) and masculinity(Masc) at values that are 1 standard deviation above and below their respective means.

66 C. Aradhye et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 135 (2015) 56–71

p = .003). We conducted separate regressions for male and female participants and found that theinteraction of masculinity and femininity differed for men and women. The interaction wasnonsignificant for both sexes, but Fig. 3 depicts that the effects were in the opposite directions,explaining the three-way interaction. Men higher in masculinity had longer looking times if they werealso high in femininity rather than low in femininity. Women higher in femininity had longer lookingtimes if they were lower in masculinity compared with those higher in masculinity (see Fig. 3). That is,androgynous men and feminine women looked longer at smiling videos compared with masculinemen and androgynous women. However, the lack of significance may be due to the small numberof men in the sample, and these results should be interpreted with caution.

Discussion

Our predictor variables were not strongly associated with our outcomes from Study 1. Given thisfinding, it is possible that the mechanism by which children manipulate adult behaviors is generalizedsuch that it is not under the control of individual variation in empathy and nurturing. The onlystatistically significant finding regarding sex roles was that femininity and masculinity interacted topredict likelihood to adopt. That is, participants higher in femininity reported higher likelihood toadopt regardless of their masculinity scores. More masculine participants scoring low in femininitytended to report lower likelihood to adopt crying children. There was also a trend for androgynous

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Fig. 3. Predicted values for looking time at smiling videos. The values illustrate the interaction of femininity (Fem) andmasculinity (Masc) for men (top) and women (bottom) at values that are 1 standard deviation above and below their respectivemeans.

C. Aradhye et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 135 (2015) 56–71 67

men and feminine women to look longer at smiling videos compared with masculine men andandrogynous women. Although we had expected to find more of an influence of these variables, thefindings support our notion of a generalized mechanism for manipulating the behavior of adults ingeneral rather than those related to children or otherwise especially vulnerable to children’smanipulations, for example, due to high levels of empathy.

General discussion

The aim of this research was to test whether adult responsiveness with regard to motivation tonurture differs as a function of children’s facial expressions (crying, smiling, and neutral). Whereasprevious research has already identified that both related and unrelated adults are sensitive to theemotions expressed by human children, researchers had not previously examined the outcome ofmotivation to nurture across an array of measures. We hypothesized that young adults would responddifferently to different basic expressions of unrelated children on selected measures of motivation tonurture. Previous studies have indicated that unrelated caregivers higher in empathy and perspectivetaking may engage in more effective caregiving strategies for children and disabled individuals(Catherine & Schonert-Reichl, 2011; Giesbrecht, 2008; Lobchuk, 2006), supporting the idea that theseindividual differences may importantly predict willingness to nurture unrelated dependents. Thus, weextended previous studies to examine the role of empathy, nurturing, and perspective taking inpredicting adult responsiveness to typically developed young children.

We speculated that more nurturing and empathic individuals could find crying children to be moredistressing, which may decrease looking times to both images and videos of crying children. In the realworld, the same effect could make unrelated adults more or less likely to adopt crying childrendepending on the manner in which empathy and nurturing are evoked. That is, individuals higherin empathic concern but low in personal distress may be inclined to adopt children who expressspecial need. Others high in personal distress but low in sympathy may be less inclined to adoptchildren perceived to be needy. Subscales from Davis’s (1983) IRI were used here to provide clarityon this issue given that the scale includes assessments of positive (empathic concern and perspectivetaking) and negative (personal distress) aspects of empathy. It is possible that the relatively liberal agerange of the children (1–3 years) depicted in our current study mitigated against stronger responses tocrying children or stronger connections to individual levels of empathy and perspective taking.However, that we did not find strong associations of these subscales with individuals’ looking times,cuteness ratings, likelihood to adopt, or distress ratings might suggest the hegemonic and unifyingnature by which children can manipulate the nurturing behaviors of even unrelated adults.

Although individual differences in empathy did not predict attention or nurturing toward children,high femininity predicted higher likelihood to adopt children across the three expressions. In caseswhere femininity and masculinity interacted, participants higher in femininity reported higher likeli-hood to adopt regardless of their masculinity scores. More masculine participants scoring low in femi-ninity tended to report lower likelihood to adopt crying children. This finding was consistent withprevious research suggesting that feminine qualities are generally associated with more nurturingand caregiving behaviors (Feingold, 1994; Frodi, Lamb, Leavitt, Donovan, Neff, et al., 1978). The currentresults also corroborate previous findings that sex roles may be a better predictor of self-reported nur-turing motivation than actual sex of the participant (Frodi & Lamb, 1978; Vonk et al., in press). This isimportant in the current study where we were limited by the small number of men in our sample,which may have precluded our ability to find sex differences. Nonetheless, we think that changingroles for men and women to some extent mitigate against the role of sex differences and make it sen-sible to instead focus on individual differences in nurturing and empathy as well as other qualities thatmight relate to caretaking.

The finding that responses to children’s expressions may be ubiquitous across individual levels ofempathy and nurturing, even in young adults unrelated to the children in question, provides supportfor our hypothesis that the expression of emotions in children serves as a general mechanism formanipulating the behavior of any adult who could potentially provide care. In general, the results sup-ported our broader hypothesis about the effect of facial expressions on adults’ responsiveness.

68 C. Aradhye et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 135 (2015) 56–71

Consistent with previous research (Messinger, 2002; Power et al., 1982), images and videos of smilingchildren generally received responses that were positive and images and videos of crying childrengenerally received responses that were negative. Although previous research has shown adults torespond positively to children’s smiles and negatively to children’s cries, here we also show linksbetween children’s expressions and motivation to nurture with both self-reported measures of cute-ness, distress, and likelihood to adopt and observed behaviors such as looking time. Despite the repeti-tive nature of completing the same Likert scales for multiple overlapping variables in the currentstudy, observed measures converged with self-reports in that smiling children were viewed for longertimes than crying children in the video condition and were rated to be cuter and more likely to beadopted compared with neutral and crying children. These results suggest participants’ strong inclina-tion to nurture smiling children rather than crying children. These trends are interesting becausealthough positive and negative feelings evoked by smiling and crying children, respectively, have beenreported (Frodi, Lamb, Leavitt, & Donovan, 1978; Hildebrandt, 1983; Messinger et al., 2001), the linkbetween these feelings and motivation to nurture has not been investigated.

It could be argued that crying children could have received higher likelihood to adopt and cutenessratings with the rationale that they might be more in need of attention and caretaking. Rather, wedetermined that crying children evoked more distress in participants compared with neutral and smil-ing children as well as lower ratings of likelihood to adopt and perceived cuteness. These apparentlynegative feelings do not seem to translate into nurturance either directly by increasing the need toadopt the children or indirectly by increasing the cuteness (or Kindenschema) of the children, whichhas been well known to evoke nurturance in adults (Glocker et al., 2009a, 2009b; Sprengelmeyeret al., 2009; Volk & Quinsey, 2002). Our findings are consistent with the notion from attachment the-ory (Bowlby, 1980) that smiling and laughter may serve the adaptive function of solidifying bondsbetween caretakers and children, but they are inconsistent with the notion that crying is also usefulin strengthening an attachment bond between primary caregivers and children. It is possible thathigher levels of distress in response to crying children do translate into real action toward participantswith an actual crying child versus a static image or video of a crying child. By presenting images andvideos to participants, we restricted the range of responses they could engage in when presented withchildren displaying various emotional states. Because participants could not soothe actual children,perhaps their behavior was logically directed toward reducing their own distress instead. Shorterlooking times at crying videos could reflect that goal and could also be an indicator of less desire todevote attention to crying children. Future research should investigate adults’ motivation to spendtime with children displaying different emotions.

Although attachment theory (Ainsworth, 1979; Bowlby, 1980) focuses on the importance of the useof children’s emotions to solidify bonds with caretakers, manipulation can also contribute to this bondin important ways (Trivers, 1974). Because attachment theory focuses on the proximate mechanismrather than the evolutionarily significant mechanism behind children’s facial expressions (Chisholm,1996; Fridlund, 1997), we used the intraspecific manipulation mechanism proposed by Dawkinsand Krebs (1978) to fill this gap. Accordingly, we assumed that if children’s facial expressions functionas a manipulator of adult behavior, adults will possess a mechanism that evokes differential respond-ing to different children’s expressions such as actions to reduce distress caused by crying children.Such a system might be similar to nestlings signaling hunger to parent birds (Godfray, 1991). Wedo not argue that this phenomenon is unique to expressions of young children. Rather, we expect thatthe finding will carry over into interactions with other adults and adolescents. Crying individuals mayproduce more distress, and happy individuals may increase bonding at any age, but it is the adaptivefunction of such differentiation that we are interested in here, providing the impetus for the study ofadults’ responses to young children.

This proposed mechanism can be investigated in future research, possibly by using more advancedtechniques of detailed and controlled imaging of children’s faces and using more accurate reactiontime software and eye-tracking data. One surprising finding was that we did not find significantlydifferent looking times between expressions in the image condition. This might have to do with theoverall longer looking times of videos compared with images, such that the differences were exagger-ated over longer durations but were not noticeable over smaller durations. This could also be a resultof videos capturing more dynamic real-life versions of expressions that might have given participants

C. Aradhye et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 135 (2015) 56–71 69

a more complete experience of expressions as opposed to the mere nature of images. A relatively smallimage size (4 � 4 inches) could be another possible limitation in evoking stronger responses. In addi-tion, presenting images of exclusively younger children may have also inspired stronger responses.

Previous research has successfully used adult perception to investigate the functioning of children’scues (Bolzani-Dinehart et al., 2005; Kringelbach et al., 2008; Sprengelmeyer et al., 2009). Becausestudying the receivers’ responses can lead to insights into the functioning of cues or signals, we usedthe same paradigm. Overall, these findings shed some light on the effect of children’s expressions onnon-kin adults’ responsiveness and motivation to nurture. Results of this research build on previousresearch on responsiveness to children’s expressions and extend the patterns to new areas of researchusing multiple variable measures.

Acknowledgments

We thank Todd Shackelford and Lisa Welling for important suggestions on the design and for com-ments and edits to earlier versions of the manuscript. We also thank Kristin Ritchey and LambertDeckers for help with the initial formulation of the idea behind the study.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2015.02.006.

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