ABSTRACT

Geriatric patients with psychiatric disorders are disarmed by babies, readily desisting from noisy, belligerent behavior. Infants as young as four months of age prefer looking at slides depicting infant faces to looking at those depicting faces of children or adults. The most obvious differences between infants and adults in their size are babies are smaller than adults. Babies are disarming. They elicit warm, affectionate, protective responses and deter aggression. Such reactions are seen not only in adults and children around the world but also in animals. People of all ages and racial backgrounds see a baby's face in individuals are not babies but merely resemble them. Even young infants differentiate babyfaced from mature-faced adults. The features that make babyfaced show strong similarities across race, there are also some differences just as there are across sex. The facial characteristics predict the babyfaceness of black men are similar to those predicting babyfaceness of white men, as are the size of the effects.