Your Brain on Babies

We’re all familiar with this image: A little boy is trapped beneath a car and an eighteen-wheeler is rushing toward him. His mother watches in horror as fate closes in. At the last second, pumped up with adrenaline, mom lifts the car, and pulls her son to safety.

This legend about maternal might is intuitively satisfying. The media industry constantly drones the triune alarm—Danger, Child, Responsibility—and most kidsploitative design ideas are similarly primitive. Fortunately, the available research offers deeper insights.

In this article I’ll develop some design tools by articulating the state of mind that babies induce. First, I’ll review scientific research about our knee-jerk responses to infants. Second, I’ll construct a coherent model of these responses. Finally, I’ll present a few examples where we can apply these insights.

1. Seeing and Responding to Kids

Kindchenschema are characteristics like big eyes and broad foreheads that show up in all mammalian infants and evoke care and interest from adults. Konrad Lorenz documented them in 1943, and recent research about these signals indicates that they also attract attention (Brosch 2007), directly motivate caretaking (Glocker 2008), activate areas of the brain that control emotion and theory of mind processes (Leibenluft 2003), and improve dexterity (Sherman 2009). That final study is particularly interesting for two reasons. First, the participants performed better on dexterity tests after viewing baby pictures. In addition to altering perception, Kindchenschema can apparently increase skill. Second, the researchers exposed their subjects to baby dogs and cats. Babyish features even cause physiological responses across species.

Kindchenschema

These studies bring us closer to understanding the brain on babies, but we’re still missing the two most obvious responses to infants: tickling and making faces.

Tickling is a bit mysterious, but a few facts can help us get into the parental tickler’s head. Tickling is a cross-cultural bonding behavior that also shows up in chimpanzees, so we know it generates hard-wired experiences between caretaker’s and children. Because tickling only works on vulnerable areas like someone’s neck, midriff and underarms, researchers theorize that tickling evolved in social animals to encourage roughhousing. In their scenario, ticklishness teaches us to cover our weak spots, and our laughter tells our benevolent torturers to keep going (Harris 1999). However, infants can’t parry and return tickling, so when their parents contact those vulnerabilities, they engage a playful, but responsibly dominant attitude. In the moment, their actions say, “I’m in control here, but I want to keep you safe and happy.” In the long term, they’re trying to prepare their kids for the worst.

This playfully instructive mindset also materializes during face making. Malatesta discovered that mothers combine verbal encouragement with expressive displays, and predictably adjust their techniques according to gender and developmental stages. Since these adjustments are consistent with cultural norms, Malatesta theorizes that expressive displays are enculturation tactics. Parents instinctively show their children how to express emotions in culturally acceptable ways (Malatesta 1982).

Effective instruction depends on an open mind, so it makes sense for babies to stimulate those theory-of-mind processes. When we’re around kids we recognize them as individuals with brains that can learn something. We want to teach them something, whether it’s how to defend themselves, or how to fit in, and we want to do it playfully.

2. Your Brain on Babies

Finally, we have a detailed snapshot of a brain on babies. Will and ability to provide care both increase. Instruction becomes an end, and play becomes a means. Emotion rises, and dominance is implicit. A woman (or man) sees a being worth investing in, and she feels responsible for it’s welfare. She knows she’s in control, and she wants to provide playful guidance.

Now that we understand the effects of Kindchenschema in greater depth, we can put these insights to work, and luckily, we can be subtle about it. Since infants naturally draw attention, gratuitous baby pictures aren’t necessary. In addition, those sprinkled stimuli are powerful. They activate our emotive centers, so decisions based on immediate sensory perception will be even stronger than usual. So, where can we use the Kindchenschema magic?

3. Applications

Playfullness

If Kindchenschema induce playful demeanors, high-pressure offices might benefit from keeping a kitten or a puppy around. A bounding baby could bring people back to positive, efficient mindsets during stressful disputes. But, if professionalism is at stake, puppies might be more appropriate for company retreats. Playful attitudes can break barriers and advance creative solutions.

Instruction

Stimulating instruction could help law enforcement agencies looking for solid information. Covertly priming witnesses with some Kindchenschema might enhance their willingness to talk, and asking questions in a game might enhance the salience of this effect.

Responsibility

This dimension gets covered all the time, but we should consider a less obvious application. Signs in New York City subway cars ask able-bodied people to give their seats to persons who are “elderly, disabled or pregnant.” People might be more generally abiding if sign makers changed the syntax to “pregnant, elderly, or disabled.”

Obviously, these ideas need testing before we can say anything conclusive. However, it’s promising that wallets with baby photos usually get returned with all their money intact.