Women Are Hardwired To Pick Up On Subliminal Signs Of Infant Distress — Even If They’re Not Mothers

The ability to take care of a tiny human is absolutely a superpower — and new research suggests that we might not even know the full extent of our abilities. A new study says that women are more likely to pick up on subliminal signs of infant distress, compared to happiness or even adult distress — regardless of whether they have children of their own.

The study, published in Biological Psychology, suggest that the human brain might prioritize signs of infant distress, giving us a deeper understanding of how humans subconsciously know how to take care of our young.

Previous studies have found that overt infant distress cues, such as crying or sad facial expressions, captures adults’ attention and spurs nurturing behavior. The new study’s authors set out to discover whether this pattern extends to subliminal signs of distress.

“We were fascinated by the idea that certain emotional signals—like a baby’s cry or sad face—might be so evolutionarily important that our brain picks up on them even when we’re not consciously aware of them... Moreover, we wanted to understand if such sensitivity was specific for mothers,” said Elena Guida, a psychotherapist and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Milano-Bicocca, and one of the study’s authors.

The researchers used eye-tracking technology and subliminal exposure to emotional facial expressions, and found that sad baby faces triggered longer reaction times than both happy baby faces and sad adult faces. 114 women participated — 57 mothers of infants, and 57 women who had never given birth.

The participants were asked to focus on a cross in the center of a screen. The researchers then flashed a picture of a subliminal emotional face—either a happy or sad baby or adult face— for 17 milliseconds.

Immediately after the image of the face, a color was shown on screen, followed by three different colored squares. The participants were directed to choose the square that matched the original color. The time it took for participants to redirect their gaze—known as saccadic latency—served as a measure of how strongly their attention was captured by the subliminal face.

The testing revealed that participants took the longest to redirect their attention after viewing a subliminal sad baby face. And, there was no statistically significant difference in timing between the women who were mothers, and those who were not.

“What surprised us was the absence of a group effect between mothers and non-mothers,” Guida told PsyPost. “Both groups showed stronger unconscious processing of sad baby faces, while other expressions—such as happy or neutral baby faces, or sad adult faces—did not elicit the same response. This points to a very specific and possibly hardwired mechanism that prioritizes infant distress cues, likely rooted in evolutionary pressures related to infant survival.”

The study’s focus on women leaves open the question of whether men react to the same subliminal cues. The authors say that their work opens the door for further research on gender and caregiving.

“This study is part of a broader project aimed at understanding the mechanisms underlying sensitive parenting,” Guida said. “By exploring both conscious and unconscious responses, we hope to shed light on the foundations of caregiving behavior and how they may vary across individuals and contexts.”