How Do Adults’ Personality Traits Influence Perceptions and Responses to Infant Faces?

Numerous studies have shown that infant facial cues significantly influence adults’ caregiving perceptions and behavior. Infant facial cues may be an adaptive mechanism for infants, as they may provide important information about the infant to a potential caregiver and evoke caregiving behavior. However, there is less research on whether all adults perceive and respond to infant cues similarly. Adults’ individual differences, by way of their personality traits, may give rise to different motivations, perceptions, and behaviors related to caregiving, and therefore may play an important role in how adults perceive and respond to infant cues. To investigate this, we recruited 142 adults from the community. We used direct and indirect paths to examine the associations between adults’ personality traits (using the HEXACO Personality Inventory), perceptions of infant facial cues (using 54 infant face stimuli and the Infant Facial Cue Rating Scale), and caregiving motivations (using the Hypothetical Adoption Paradigm). The results showed that higher Emotionality and Conscientiousness were directly related to higher hypothetical adoption preference. Honesty-Humility was indirectly associated with higher adoption preference through higher ratings of baby cues. These results suggest that adults’ personalities are related to their perceptions of infants and caregiving desires. The findings from this study can also lead to offering extra support to adults who work/interact with infants and children across various contexts (e.g., schools, daycares, healthcare facilities, playgrounds, hospitals) and whose personality traits may be related to less positive perceptions of infants and caregiving desires.