University of Sussex, School of Psychology, Falmer, UK.
University of Lyon/Saint-Etienne, Equipe Neuro-Ethologie Sensorielle, ENES/Neuro-PSI CNRS UMR9197, Saint-Etienne, France.
BMC Psychol. 2016 Apr 14;4:19. doi: 10.1186/s40359-016-0123-6.
Despite widespread evidence that gender stereotypes influence human parental behavior, their potential effects on adults' perception of babies' cries have been overlooked. In particular, whether adult listeners overgeneralize the sex dimorphism that characterizes the voice of adult speakers (men are lower-pitched than women) to their perception of babies' cries has not been investigated.
We used playback experiments combining natural and re-synthesised cries of 3 month-old babies to investigate whether the interindividual variation in the fundamental frequency (pitch) of cries affected adult listeners' identification of the baby's sex, their perception the baby's femininity and masculinity, and whether these biases interacted with their perception of the level of discomfort expressed by the cry.
We show that low-pitched cries are more likely to be attributed to boys and high-pitched cries to girls, despite the absence of sex differences in pitch. Moreover, low-pitched boys are perceived as more masculine and high-pitched girls are perceived as more feminine. Finally, adult men rate relatively low-pitched cries as expressing more discomfort when presented as belonging to boys than to girls.
Such biases in caregivers' responses to babies' cries may have implications on children's immediate welfare and on the development of their gender identity.
尽管有广泛的证据表明性别刻板印象会影响人类的父母行为，但它们对成年人对婴儿哭声的感知的潜在影响却被忽视了。特别是，成人听众是否会将成人说话者声音的性别二态性（男性的音高低于女性）过度概括到他们对婴儿哭声的感知中，这一点尚未得到研究。
我们使用了播放实验，结合了 3 个月大婴儿的自然和重新合成的哭声，以调查哭声的基频（音高）的个体间变化是否会影响成年听众对婴儿性别的识别、对婴儿女性气质和男性气质的感知，以及这些偏见是否与他们对哭声表达的不适程度的感知相互作用。
我们表明，尽管哭声的音高没有性别差异，但音低的哭声更有可能被归因于男孩，而音高的哭声更有可能被归因于女孩。此外，音低的男孩被认为更具男子气概，而音高的女孩被认为更具女性气质。最后，成年男性在将相对音低的哭声归为男孩时，比归为女孩时，认为哭声表达的不适程度更高。
照顾者对婴儿哭声的反应中的这种偏见可能会对儿童的即时福利和他们的性别认同发展产生影响。
