Sex and gender influences on adult male perception of infant cries Público
Richey, Lynnet (Summer 2018)
Abstract
Male infants are abused more frequently than female infants. However, the cause of this disparity has yet to be investigated. Infant crying is known to be the primary trigger for abuse. As such, in this two-part study we examined the influences of infant sex, gender stereotypes, and sound qualities on the perceived aversiveness of infant cries. Adult male participants rated the perceived aversiveness of audio and video recordings of crying infants. In experiment one, only acoustic stimuli were used. In experiment two, video stimuli were used which included both the acoustic component of the infant’s cry as well as infant gender cues in the form of clothing color (blue to suggest male, pink to suggest female). In half of the videos shown to each subject, the gender cue matched the sex of the child. In the other half of the videos, the cue and the infant’s sex were discordant. Results from part one indicate that in the absence of visual stimuli or gender cues, male infant cries are more aversive than female infant cries. However, there was no difference between male and female infant cries for any measured objective sound characteristic. In experiment two, it was discovered that female infants who were suggested to be female to viewers were perceived as more aversive than females suggested to be male or males suggested to be either male or female. These results lead to the conclusion that perceived aversiveness is the result of a variety of interacting, occasionally opposing factors including sex-specific cry qualities and gender stereotypes. In addition, given that boys are abused more than girls, one can infer that other powerful factors are at play that modulate aggressive interactions with male and female infants. This study elucidates two factors that affect rates of infant aversiveness and emphasizes the need for future projects to clarify what other forces influence abuse rates.
Table of Contents
Abstract...................................................................................................1
Background..............................................................................................3
Hypotheses...............................................................................................8
Methods...................................................................................................9
Analysis..................................................................................................11
Results...................................................................................................14
Figure 1: Effects of infant sex on aversiveness ratings...................................14
Figure 2: Aversiveness scores for each cry from subject 19............................15
Figure 3: Measurement of correct guesses of infant sex.................................15
Figure 4: Correlations between aversiveness ratings and infant cry characteristics......16
Figure 5: Comparison of auditory characteristics by infant sex........................16
Figure 6: A) Sex and B) clothing color effects on aversiveness ratings.............17
Figure 7: Sex and clothing color interaction on aversiveness ratings, with follow-up comparisons illustrated...18
Figure 8: Main effects of infant sex and clothing color on aversiveness ratings as a function of whether participants equated clothing color with infant color...19
Figure 9: Comparison of aversiveness ratings in experiment one with the no group of experiment two.....20
Figure 10: Sex and clothing color interaction on aversiveness ratings, with follow-up comparisons illustrated......21
Figure 11: Auditory cry qualities by video groupings and gender.....................21
Figure 12: Pitch, fundamental frequency (Fo), and intensity measures between video groups and gender.........22
Discussion...............................................................................................23
References..............................................................................................30
Supplementary Figures.............................................................................37
Supplementary Figure 1: The average aversiveness for male infants and female infants for each subject in experiment one.....37
Supplementary Figure 2: The average aversiveness for male infants and female infants for each subject in experiment two.....37
Supplementary Figure 3: The average aversiveness for infants seen in pink and infants seen in blue for each subject in experiment one.....38
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