WASHINGTON — Puzzling new research suggests women have a harder time than men looking at babies with facial birth defects.
It’s a surprise finding. Psychiatrists from the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, who were studying perceptions of beauty, had expected women to spend more time than men cooing over pictures of extra-cute babies. Nope.
Instead, the small study being published today raises more questions than it can answer.
First the background: The McLean team already had studied men and women looking at photos of adults’ faces on a computer screen.
They rated facial beauty, and could do various keystrokes to watch the photos longer. A keystroke count showed men put three times as much effort into watching beautiful women as women put into watching handsome men.
Lead researcher Dr. Igor Elman wondered what else might motivate women. Enter the new baby study, which found women banished pictures of children with abnormalities more quickly from the screen than men.
“They had this subliminal motivation to get rid of the faces,” said Elman, who questions whether “we’re designed by nature to invest all the resources into healthy-looking kids.”
Both genders spent equal time and effort looking at photos of the normal babies.
The study couldn’t explain the gender disparity.
Elman noted that previous work has linked child abandonment and neglect to abnormal appearance, and even asked whether the finding might challenge the concept of unconditional maternal love.
The work is part of broader research into how we normally form attachments and what can make those attachments go awry, work that tests if what people say matches what they do.
