Dummies can stunt boys' emotional growth, find researchers
Katy Morton
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Boys who are often given dummies as babies grow up to be less emotionally mature as they are unable to mimic facial expressions, according to a new study.
American researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that six- and seven-year-old boys who spent more time with dummies in their mouths as young children were less likely to mimic the emotional expressions of faces peering out from a video.
The effect of heavy dummy use as a child also caused college-aged men to score lower than their peers on common tests of perspective taking, a component of empathy.
Researchers found that these men scored lower on standardised tests of emotional intelligence that measure the way they make decisions based on assessing the moods of other people.
Lead author Paula Niendenthal from the University of Wisconsin-Madison said, ‘We can talk to infants, but at least initially they aren’t going to understand what the words mean. So the way we communicate with them at first is by using the tone of our voice and our facial expressions. With a dummy in their mouth, a baby is less able to mirror those expressions and the emotions they represent.’
She went on to say that the way humans understand what someone is feeling is to mirror the facial expression of another person. Ms Nendenthal linkened the effect of heavy dummy usage to that of Botox injections as users experience a narrower range of emotions and have trouble identifying other people’s emotions.
In contrast there was no effect of dummy use on the same outcomes for girls. The researchers suggest this could be because girls develop earlier than boys or that parents are inadvertently compensating for girls using a dummy.
Ms Niendenthal said, ‘Since girls are not expected to be unemotional, they’re stimulated in other ways. But because boys are desired to be unemotional, when parents put a dummy in their mouth, they don’t do anything to compensate and help them learn about emotions.’
The study is published in the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology.
The effect of heavy dummy use as a child also caused college-aged men to score lower than their peers on common tests of perspective taking, a component of empathy.
Researchers found that these men scored lower on standardised tests of emotional intelligence that measure the way they make decisions based on assessing the moods of other people.
Lead author Paula Niendenthal from the University of Wisconsin-Madison said, ‘We can talk to infants, but at least initially they aren’t going to understand what the words mean. So the way we communicate with them at first is by using the tone of our voice and our facial expressions. With a dummy in their mouth, a baby is less able to mirror those expressions and the emotions they represent.’
She went on to say that the way humans understand what someone is feeling is to mirror the facial expression of another person. Ms Nendenthal linkened the effect of heavy dummy usage to that of Botox injections as users experience a narrower range of emotions and have trouble identifying other people’s emotions.
In contrast there was no effect of dummy use on the same outcomes for girls. The researchers suggest this could be because girls develop earlier than boys or that parents are inadvertently compensating for girls using a dummy.
Ms Niendenthal said, ‘Since girls are not expected to be unemotional, they’re stimulated in other ways. But because boys are desired to be unemotional, when parents put a dummy in their mouth, they don’t do anything to compensate and help them learn about emotions.’
The study is published in the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology.
