Blackpill Even babies and kids can't escape the Blackpill

[PhineasSpear]

1. Study: Women more likely than men to reject unattractive babies​

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/st...ikely-than-men-to-reject-unattractive-babies/

Women are more likely than men to reject unattractive-looking babies, according to a study by researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, possibly reflecting an evolutionary-derived need for diverting limited resources towards the nurturing of healthy offspring. The findings also challenge the idea of unconditional maternal love.

“Our study shows how beauty can affect parental attitudes,” said Igor Elman, senior author of the research, director of the Clinical Psychopathology Laboratory at McLean Hospital, and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “It shows women are more invested in raising healthy babies and that they are more prone to reject unattractive kids.”

Subjects, including 13 healthy men and 14 healthy women, were shown photos of 80 infants, including 50 normal ones and 30 who had abnormal facial features, including such abnormalities as cleft palates, skin disorders, Down syndrome, and others. Each photo was set to remain on screen for four seconds, but subjects could extend or shorten the viewing time of each photo by pressing certain computer keys. A second part of the experiment asked the subjects to rate the attractiveness of each infant on a numerical scale.

The study found that men and women expended a similar amount of effort – quantified by the number of key presses made to keep photos up on the screen – to extend the viewing time of the normal babies. At the same time, the attractiveness ratings given by men for these normal babies were significantly lower than those given by the women. However, when it came to the photos of abnormal babies, women made a greater effort to avoid looking at them, compared with men. Still, the women rated abnormal faces as unattractive as did men.

The differences between men and women in motivational effort to extend or shorten the viewing time of abnormal-looking babies “may reflect an evolutionary-derived need for diversion of limited resources to the nurturance of healthy offspring,” the paper concludes.

The findings question the concept of unconditional parental love, at least among women. “What our results suggest is that this is determined by facial attractiveness,” said Rinah Yamamoto, first author and a research fellow in psychiatry. “Women may be more sensitized to aesthetic defects and may be more prone to reject unattractive kids. Men do not appear to be as motivated. They didn’t expend the same effort.”

The study noted that work with abandoned and neglected children firmly links their abnormal appearance to maltreatment by caregivers. One study, done in Israel, found that 70 percent of children abandoned by their parents had a conspicuous flaw in their appearance even though those flaws were not life-threatening nor did they affect the children’s intellectual development.

“This may be to some extent because adults are unconsciously motivated to care for infants with healthy facial features, indicating fitness for survival and to exclude the least fit,” the paper said.

“The abandonment and neglect data along with our findings may thus challenge the commonly held view of unconditional maternal love and acceptance of the offspring,” it said. “If mother’s love is not unconditional, what is the condition? The results provide indirect support for … the idea that babies’ aesthetic appearance has a motivating influence on the adults’ caretaking behavior.”

The paper suggests that the findings may have clinical implications in terms of predicting potential for abuse and neglect of children.

Elman said that because the study involved a small number of subjects it must be replicated in larger follow-up studies. Future studies will also involve brain scans of subjects in order to try to pinpoint how men’s and women’s brains may be functioning differently while they view the images and make their choices for extending or shortening the time they are looking at the images.

The study from the article above is linked here.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2698285/
The article also forgot to include this.

Additionally, the non-abandoned babies with an appearance flaw were commonly abused and isolated from their siblings by the caregivers. - Excerpt from aformentioned study

2. Study: Unattractive infant faces elicit negative affect from adults​

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4339506/

We examined the relationship between infant attractiveness and adult affect by investigating whether differing levels of infant facial attractiveness elicit facial muscle movement correlated with positive and negative affect from adults (N = 87) using electromyography. Unattractive infant faces evoked significantly more corrugator supercilii and levator labii superioris movement (physiological correlates of negative affect) than attractive infant faces. These results suggest that unattractive infants may be at risk for negative affective responses from adults, though the relationship between those responses and caregiving behavior remains elusive.

Facial attractiveness can elicit preferential treatment beginning in infancy (Langlois et al., 2000), both from parents (Langlois, Ritter, Casey, & Sawin, 1995) and strangers (Stephan & Langlois, 1984). Stereotypes about children’s and infants’ abilities based on their physical attractiveness can influence behavior toward those children, which in turn affects the children’s social interaction and personality development (Langlois & Stephan, 1981). This research seeks to examine attractiveness as a characteristic that elicits differential affect from adults, using electromyography to detect subtle affective changes.

Note, the study mentions that adults are consciously aware of differences in attractiveness

Adults’ ability to judge the attractiveness of infants is highly reliable and consistent (Langlois et al., 2000), indicating that they are aware of differences in attractiveness.

Adult women presented with photographs of infants looked longer at infants rated high on cuteness (Hildebrandt & Fitzgerald, 1978). Meanwhile, children lower in attractiveness may face greater challenges, as research has shown that adults have negative biases and stereotypes about their abilities and personal characteristics.

....presented undergraduates with a set of photographs of a sample of infants and asked them to rate the infants for attractiveness and for 10 evaluative adjective pairs. They found that more attractive babies were rated as smarter and more likeable, whereas less attractive babies were rated as causing parents more problems.

More baby like faces also elicit increased protection from adults (Alley, 1983), while infants with cranio-facial anomalies elicited less smiling and vocalizing from their mothers (Field & Vega-Lahr, 1984). This further suggests that adults may have preferences for normal and attractive infant faces over abnormal or unattractive ones.

More generally, adults prefer to view attractive faces and perceive them more positively, while simultaneously rating unattractive faces as less intelligent, social, and altruistic than medium and high attractive faces (Griffin & Langlois, 2006). The assumption that unattractive faces are associated with more negative attributes may be related to humans’ tendency to pay more attention to negative information in faces (Oehman, Lundqvist, & Esteves, 2001) due to their potential threat, or may reflect a larger pattern of negativity bias across domains (Vaish, Grossman, &Woodward, 2008).

And now for the results of this study:

As expected, we found a strong relationship between participants’ physiological negative affective reactions, as measured by muscle movement, and the attractiveness of infant faces. This was true both for the CS site and the LLS site and indicates that unattractive infant faces elicit more general negative affect as well as more disgust reactions than attractive infant faces. These results parallel Principe and Langlois’ (2011) findings with adult faces and demonstrate that affective responses are stable across facial stimuli regardless of the age of the stimuli. Adults are sensitive to the attractiveness of both adult and infant faces, and accordingly display movement of facial muscles that are correlated with emotional reactions to these faces. Results from Langlois et al. (1995) suggested this in real interactions where mothers engaged in more affectionate behavior with attractive than unattractive infants.

This next quotation is basically just a restatement of the previous quotations mashed together as well as a brief summary:

Other studies (Stephan & Langlois, 1984; Ritter et al., 1991) have shown that adults make judgments about infants’ personalities, behavior, and abilities based on their attractiveness, but the current study is the first to directly indicate that infant attractiveness may also influence adults’ physiological affective reactions. The muscle movements demonstrated in the present study indicate that adults are processing and affectively reacting to those differences in infant attractiveness. Additionally, the finding that these affective responses are generally driven by negative affect toward unattractive infants, rather than positive affect toward attractive infants, is important one.

It is also unclear what the effect of repeated exposure to unattractive infant faces might be on the adults who encounter them. Might these negative affective reactions build up over time, especially for the primary caretaker for an unattractive infant? Future studies might investigate whether mothers of unattractive infants are more likely to show symptoms of depression.

These bulletpoints is basically the TLDR of the study

• Unattractive infant faces elicit more negative affect than attractive infant faces.
• Adults display significant disgust responses to unattractive infant faces.
• Adults affectively differentiate between attractive and unattractive infants.

3. Study: Unattractive Children Get Less Parental Attention​

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050412213412.htm

A researcher at the University of Alberta has shown that parents are more likely to give better care and pay closer attention to good-looking children compared to unattractive ones. Dr. Andrew Harrell presented his findings recently at the Warren E. Kalbach Population Conference in Edmonton, Alberta.

Harrell's findings are based on an observational study of children and shopping cart safety. With the approval of management at 14 different supermarkets, Harrell's team of researchers observed parents and their two to five-year-old children for 10 minutes each, noting if the child was buckled into the grocery-cart seat, and how often the child wandered more than 10 feet away. The researchers independently graded each child on a scale of one to 10 on attractiveness.

Findings showed that 1.2 per cent of the least attractive children were buckled in, compared with 13.3 per cent of the most attractive youngsters. The observers also noticed the less attractive children were allowed to wander further away and more often from their parents. In total, there were 426 observations at the 14 supermarkets.

Harrell, who has been researching shopping cart safety since 1990 and has published a total of 13 articles on the topic, figures his latest results are based on a parent's instinctive Darwinian response: we're unconsciously more likely to lavish attention on attractive children simply because they're our best genetic material.

"Attractiveness as a predictor of behaviour, especially parenting behaviour, has been around a long time," said Harrell, a father of five and a grandfather of three. "Most parents will react to these results with shock and dismay. They'll say, 'I love all my kids, and I don't discriminate on the basis of attractiveness.' The whole point of our research is that people do."

4. Study: Infant attractiveness predicts maternal behaviors and attitudes.​

https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037/0012-1649.31.3.464

The relations between infant attractiveness and maternal behavior were examined by observing mothers feeding and playing with their firstborn infants while they were still in the hospital after giving birth (N = 144) and again when the infants were 3 months of age (N = 115). The attitudes of the mothers toward their infants were also assessed. Mothers of more attractive infants were more affectionate and playful compared with mothers of less attractive infants. In contrast, the mothers of less attractive infants were more likely to be attentive to other people rather than to their infant and to engage in routine caregiving rather than affectionate behavior. The attitudes of the mothers of less attractive infants were also more negative than those of mothers of more attractive infants, but the number of differences in attitudes was not as great as the behavioral differences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

The full study aside from the summary linked above is locked behind "Get Access" but I found a PDF that is a transcription of the actual study. I'm not going through the troubles of copy and pasting the entire study so I'm going to put a link if you want to read it.
https://scispace.com/pdf/infant-attractiveness-predicts-maternal-behaviors-and-4lg5nsind5.pdf

5. Study: Adults' responses to infants varying in appearance of age and attractiveness.​

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-20849-001

Three studies examined the relations among age appearance, facial attractiveness, and adult expectations of the developmental maturity of infants. In Study 1, a relation was demonstrated between ratings of the attractiveness (77 judges) and age appearance (53 judges) of 6-mo-olds: less attractive infants were judged to be older than their attractive age-mates. In Study 2, 75 parents judged the abilities and estimated the ages of 6-mo-old infants. Parents overestimated both the age and the developmental abilities of the unattractive infants. Finally, the results of Study 2 were replicated in Study 3, with 348 mothers. It was also demonstrated in Study 3 that, although mothers expected unattractive infants to be capable of more specific developmental skills, they nevertheless rated the general competence of the unattractive infants to be lower than that of attractive infants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)

Bonus​

I found (and was inspired by) a reddit thread that ask whether if unattractive children were more likely to be adopted. Guess the response:

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/morbidquestions/comments/99dnb8/does_appearance_play_a_big_factor_in_adoption/#:~:text=A%20lot%20of%20factors%20go,%E2%80%A2%208y%20ago


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/morbidquestions/comments/99dnb8/comment/e4n1qin/


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/morbidquestions/comments/99dnb8/comment/e4n2mxh/


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/morbidquestions/comments/99dnb8/comment/e4p0a0w/

 

[Baasskap]

All these studies to prove that yes the sky is blue, the wind blows and the sun shines. I get why they do them but it doesn't stop being annoying.

 

[ToBurble&Pine]

Don't be ugly reigns this world

 

[pumpkinlord130]

Water, but oofy doofies will deny it.

 

[Lonly ghost]

So that's why my mom used to beat me when I was a kid.

 

[FoidsEnshittifyAll]

never began for babycels... .

 

[darkpilledsoldier]

Being ugly is a curse!!!

 

[nihilum]

Don't be ugly reigns this world

 

[Frail Link]

Genetic lottery is inescapable

 

[AutistKing]

1. Study: Women more likely than men to reject unattractive babies​

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/st...ikely-than-men-to-reject-unattractive-babies/










The study from the article above is linked here.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2698285/
The article also forgot to include this.

2. Study: Unattractive infant faces elicit negative affect from adults​

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4339506/


Note, the study mentions that adults are consciously aware of differences in attractiveness





And now for the results of this study:

This next quotation is basically just a restatement of the previous quotations mashed together as well as a brief summary:


These bulletpoints is basically the TLDR of the study

3. Study: Unattractive Children Get Less Parental Attention​

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050412213412.htm

4. Study: Infant attractiveness predicts maternal behaviors and attitudes.​

https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037/0012-1649.31.3.464

The full study aside from the summary linked above is locked behind "Get Access" but I found a PDF that is a transcription of the actual study. I'm not going through the troubles of copy and pasting the entire study so I'm going to put a link if you want to read it.
https://scispace.com/pdf/infant-attractiveness-predicts-maternal-behaviors-and-4lg5nsind5.pdf

5. Study: Adults' responses to infants varying in appearance of age and attractiveness.​

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-20849-001

Bonus​

I found (and was inspired by) a reddit thread that ask whether if unattractive children were more likely to be adopted. Guess the response:

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/morbidquestions/comments/99dnb8/does_appearance_play_a_big_factor_in_adoption/#:~:text=A%20lot%20of%20factors%20go,%E2%80%A2%208y%20ago


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/morbidquestions/comments/99dnb8/comment/e4n1qin/


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/morbidquestions/comments/99dnb8/comment/e4n2mxh/


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/morbidquestions/comments/99dnb8/comment/e4p0a0w/

H20.

 

[SubhumanOldcel]

Don't be ugly reigns this world

 

[SubhumanOldcel]

Genetic lottery is inescapable

 

[XUn0rth0doxS0rrowsX]

1. Study: Women more likely than men to reject unattractive babies​

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/st...ikely-than-men-to-reject-unattractive-babies/










The study from the article above is linked here.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2698285/
The article also forgot to include this.

2. Study: Unattractive infant faces elicit negative affect from adults​

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4339506/


Note, the study mentions that adults are consciously aware of differences in attractiveness





And now for the results of this study:

This next quotation is basically just a restatement of the previous quotations mashed together as well as a brief summary:


These bulletpoints is basically the TLDR of the study

3. Study: Unattractive Children Get Less Parental Attention​

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050412213412.htm

4. Study: Infant attractiveness predicts maternal behaviors and attitudes.​

https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037/0012-1649.31.3.464

The full study aside from the summary linked above is locked behind "Get Access" but I found a PDF that is a transcription of the actual study. I'm not going through the troubles of copy and pasting the entire study so I'm going to put a link if you want to read it.
https://scispace.com/pdf/infant-attractiveness-predicts-maternal-behaviors-and-4lg5nsind5.pdf

5. Study: Adults' responses to infants varying in appearance of age and attractiveness.​

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-20849-001

Bonus​

I found (and was inspired by) a reddit thread that ask whether if unattractive children were more likely to be adopted. Guess the response:

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/morbidquestions/comments/99dnb8/does_appearance_play_a_big_factor_in_adoption/#:~:text=A%20lot%20of%20factors%20go,%E2%80%A2%208y%20ago


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/morbidquestions/comments/99dnb8/comment/e4n1qin/


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/morbidquestions/comments/99dnb8/comment/e4n2mxh/


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/morbidquestions/comments/99dnb8/comment/e4p0a0w/

This unironically devastate me

 

[UndeadDeadMan]

You know how the media portrays storks as this graceful and motherly animal?

Here's some blackpill. Storks are known to eat or kill their weaker offspring if resources are low. Usually the method of killing is grabbing the baby storks with their beak and dropping them from the nest. The impact will kill the baby stork 99% of the time, because of how high up these birds build their nests.

 

[TurkeyKing]

Genetic lottery is inescapable