By Bruce Bower
Everyone oohs and ahs over babies. Ironically, new research suggests that young women taking oral contraceptives are especially good at picking out babies with the most adorable little mugs.
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Female sex hormones sensitize women to differences in babies’ cuteness, propose psychologist Reiner Sprengelmeyer of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and his colleagues. When given choices between computer-manipulated images of a baby’s face, premenopausal women discern gradations in the cuteness of the face better than either postmenopausal women or men of all ages, Sprengelmeyer’s group reports in the February Psychological Science.
In the new study, young women taking hormone-boosting contraceptive pills outdid those not taking contraceptives, as well as premenopausal women in general, at detecting babies’ cuteness.