Features - Women "Have Cute Baby Instinct"

Psychologists at St Andrews University discovered that women could determine a pretty baby instinctively by its chubby cheeks, big round eyes and button nose.

The team suggests that cuteness sensitivity is affected by female reproductive hormones.

They found that women aged 19-26 and 45-51 were more sensitive to differences in infant cuteness than men aged 19-26 and 53-60.However, women aged 53-60 performed at the same level as the men when determining the attractiveness of the newborns.

Dr Reiner Sprengelmeyer explained: "Because average age at menopause is 51 years in the UK, these findings suggest the possible involvement of reproductive hormones in cuteness sensitivity.

"We therefore compared cuteness discrimination in pre and post menopausal women of the same age alongside women taking and not taking oral contraceptives (progesterone and oestrogen).

"Pre-menopausal women and young women taking oral contraceptives - which raise hormone levels artificially - were more sensitive to variations of cuteness than their respective comparison groups.

"Given that cuteness is considered an indicator of being young, helpless, and in need of care, we hypothesise that the ability to detect small variations in the degree of cuteness may have evolved to guide the allocation of necessary maternal resources to the infant."

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Page Updated: 20 February 2009