Adults’ Responsiveness to Infant Facial Expressions Chinmay Aradhye and Dr. Jennifer Vonk Dept. of Psychology, Oakland University Methods Part 1 1)Forty-five images of 15 infant faces were collected from consenting parents, such that each infant had 3 images with either Neutral, Crying, or Smiling expression. 2)Images were categorized by 40 college student raters with at least 80% inter-rater reliability for each image. 3)Images were randomly distributed into 3 different sets (A, B & C), each set having 5 images of each expression (5n+5c+5s) and each infant appearing only once in each set. 4)Images were displayed on a 21” computer screen using E-prime presentation software, to 131 college undergraduates. 5)Students were asked to rate the images on cuteness and how likely they would be to adopt the infant if the situation were presented to them. Part 2 1)Nine, ≈ one-minute long video snippets of infant expressions were created from copyright free YouTube videos (similar to images above). 2)Participants were shown the snippets in recursive loops and asked to rate how distressed they felt while viewing each snippet. Introduction Infants show an innate ability to express distress and joy with distinct facial expressions (Darwin, 1972; Ekman, 2006). Adults show consistent voluntary and involuntary sensitivity to crying and smiling infant facial expressions (Hilderbrandt 1983; Power, Hildebrandt & Fitzgerald, 1982). The details of this evolved infant-adult interdependent relationship are currently unknown (Luo, Li & Lee, 2011). One possible function for these kinds of communication signals is intraspecific manipulation (Dawkins & Krebs, 1978) in which members of the same species indulge in the manipulation of another members' behavior using specific signals. To study the cognitive responsiveness of adults to basic infant expressions, we aim to measure untrained adults' viewing duration, distress, perceived cuteness, and desire to adopt in 15 different infants as a function of different emotional expression conditions (smiling, crying, neutral) in images and videos. Discussion Results of this experiment indicate that the expression of an infant is likely to affect the perception of the observing adult on measured qualities of cuteness, experienced distress, and may significantly affect nurturing as seen in the ‘likely to adopt’ ratings along with other voluntary and involuntary changes (Power, Hildebrandt & Fitzgerald, 1982). Future studies can examine this relationship using more direct manipulations of facial expressions and resulting effects on adult responsiveness. Contact: *References available upon request 1. Mean Video Looking Times 6. Likely to Adopt Ratings 3. Reported Distress 2. Mean Cuteness Ratings Results 1)Looking Times for Crying versus Smiling videos significantly differed [F (1, 128) = 5.51, p =.02, η2 =.041] 2)‘Cuteness’ ratings were significantly different across the 3 expressions F(1.61, 159.8) = , p < )For the video snippets, ratings on reported ‘distress’ differed significantly across expressions F(1.15, 114.5) = 108.8, p <.001. There were also significant gender differences in reported ‘distress’ F(1.15, 114.5) =7.981, p = )‘Likely to adopt’ ratings were also significantly different across 3 expressions F(1.58, ) = 88.13, p < )Males higher in masculinity had longer Looking Times if they were also high in femininity. Females higher in femininity had longer looking times if they were lower in masculinity. 6)Participants high in empathic concern (Davis’ IRI) and femininity (BSRI) considered Neutral and Smiling babies more Adoptable. (Empathy: r =.45, p <.001 & r =.49, p <.001 and Femininty: r =.44, p <.001 & r =.46, p <.001 respectively). 5. Video Looking Times X Gender Roles