Apparently dads don’t seem to care what the kid looks like. Moms on the other hand…
Much of the answer, they found out, depends on the beholder’s sex. The men in the study were less likely than women to click off photos of unattractive babies — viewing them for the full four seconds — but clicked quite a bit to hold on to the images of the pretty ones. Their reactions were the same whether they had children of their own or not. Women, conversely, left the keyboard alone when they were looking at pretty babies but hurried away from the less attractive ones — with the results again not seeming to be influenced by whether or not they were mothers themselves.
“[Women] pressed the key 2.5 times as much to get rid of those pictures,” Elman says. “That’s highly statistically significant.”
Although later in the article:
There are some potential holes in Elman’s work, all of which he acknowledges. For one thing, it’s possible women avoid the unattractive faces not because they’re less sensitive to them but because they’re more sensitive, simply finding the hardships endured by unhealthy babies too difficult to contemplate. Such highly tuned empathy can ultimately make them better caregivers, even if a four-second exposure to the idea is painful. “Everyone will try to get away from a stimulus that feels like a punishment and hold on to one that feels like a reward,” Elman says.
So what does this all mean? It’s an interesting study that really doesn’t prove anything. Personally, I think Time published it for the headline…kind of what I just did. Either way, it’s worth reading.
Check it out for yourself
And for good measure, here’s a picture of Cher, holding her ugly baby, Eric Stoltz, from the movie Mask
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