Child schema

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Children have distinctive facial features that make adults more willing to protect and care for them.

The child scheme describes the child proportions that occur in human children and young animals, especially certain facial features that act as key stimuli and thus trigger brood care behavior . This ensures that the parents care for their young children and they suckle or breast-feeding , feed them meals to prepare, protect and raise. In species in which the offspring have a long childhood, reactions that are secured by instinctive behavior also play an important role in maintaining the parents' emotional bond with the child ( parent-child relationship ) for a long time.

Evolutionary benefit

The change in face and skull proportions in the infant, child, and adult

In 1943 Konrad Lorenz postulated the term child schema as a designation of a feature aggregate of the toddler face (and the head and face proportions of various young animals). These features include a proportionally large head, a high forehead region and, as a result, the placement of facial features relatively low down. In addition, a round face, large, round eyes, a small nose, a small chin, round cheeks and elastic, soft skin are among the characteristics. The child's head is larger than the adult's body, and the limbs (arms, legs, fingers) are shorter.

From an evolutionary point of view, this response by parents and other caregivers to child characteristics is an advantage. Because they are thereby motivated to the necessary or beneficial protective and caring behavior. Thomas Alley demonstrated that this works in 1983: Adults behave more protective, caring and less aggressive towards characteristics appropriate to child schema than they behave towards older individuals.

Examples from the animal kingdom

The child schema exists in the same way as with humans in the animal kingdom . Young animals of almost all animal species are given special care not only by their older conspecifics, but also by humans, if they emit key stimuli that correspond to the child pattern.

The child schema does not only exist in mammals, but in all recent vertebrates . Extinct vertebrates such as the holotype of the predatory dinosaur Sciurumimus , an exceptionally well-preserved young animal, also show a child pattern.

  • Vervet monkey and baby.jpg

  • Chihuahua , a breed of dog bred to be a child

  • Extreme breeding: Child pattern for the pug, a brachycephalic breed of dog

  • The child pattern also works with closed eyes.

  • The little polar bear Knut in the Berlin Zoo

  • Fossil skull of a young predatory dinosaur Sciurumimus

  • The child schema can trigger entry behavior .

Further meaning

The association of the child schema with "sweet" and "cute" has a general effect and also in areas that go beyond the original biological function. In Japanese manga and anime , the child scheme (oversized eyes and heads, very small or missing noses) is used to increase attractiveness. This is exaggeratedly used in the Super Deformed drawing style. The aesthetic concept that emphasizes innocence and childliness and has spread to all areas of Japanese society is denoted by the word kawaii .

The child schema in adults

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A study at the University of Regensburg tried to prove that adult male and female faces are judged to be particularly attractive if they are approximated to the child schema with the aid of a computer, i.e. if a certain proportion of children is mixed in (Braun, Gründl, Marberger and Scherber). The child scheme is also used in cosmetics to increase attractiveness. Karl Grammer, on the other hand, distinguishes a "sexy scheme" from the child scheme in terms of attractiveness.

An adult person who corresponds to the child schema is associated with positive traits: friendliness, innocence, innocence, appearance of youthfulness and health, expectation of fertility (Symons 1979).

The child schema in women

Braun, Gründl, Marberger and Scherber (2001) investigated in the study mentioned, to what extent an approximation of the facial proportions of adult women to the child pattern increases the attractiveness. To do this, they created five face variations of six different faces by morphing , the proportions of which were approximated to the child's scheme in 10% steps. The test subjects selected the most attractive face from the variants and the original face. 90.48% of all respondents chose their favorites from the variants adapted to the child scheme. On average, a child schema proportion of 29.21% was selected. It follows that the characteristics of the child schema increase the attractiveness of women. It was also concluded that the gain in attractiveness by adapting to the child's scheme is independent of the attractiveness of the original face. Thus, the attractiveness of an already attractive woman can be increased by child schema attributes. Karl Grammer, on the other hand, does not think it makes sense to speak of a "scheme" when decisive components reduce the attractiveness: According to Grammer, neither the high forehead nor the large eye relief nor "the chubby complex cheeks of the child scheme" are perceived as attractive. Female attractiveness is characterized "by signs of maturity, which is expressed in high, broad cheekbones".

A 2009 study shows that neuronal activity increases in the nucleus accumbens , a region of the brain known as the “reward center”. In addition, other brain regions respond to the child's schema, including areas that play a role in face processing and attention. The researchers suspect that similar processes could take place in the brain in men.

The child schema in men

Leonardo DiCaprio as an example of a combination of child schema and maturity characteristics

Hirschberg (1978) found that the child schema does not increase the attractiveness of men's faces. This is due to the fact that the associated characteristic of weakness and neediness cannot go hand in hand with the socially desirable masculine dominance. On the other hand, maturity characteristics such as a big chin, high cheekbones, deep brows, narrow lips and eyes as well as strong beard growth are more relevant for male attractiveness as an indicator of fertility.

A study by Cunningham, Barbee and Pike (1990) contradicts these assumptions. They start from the multiple motive hypothesis of physical attractiveness , which attributes the attractiveness of men to women to a combination of childish and mature characteristics. These men create the feeling of wanting to take care of them, but at the same time they are endowed with characteristics of maturity as an expression of strength. This apparent paradox dissolves in the course of the experiments, as a combination of maturity features such as high cheekbones ( correlation with physical attractiveness: 0.36) and childlike characteristics such as large eyes (correlation with physical attractiveness: 0.49) on women look attractive.

The combination of mature and childlike characteristics is therefore considered more attractive than the extremes. A face with above-average maturity characteristics is negatively associated with dominance, while a face with above-average child schema attributes suggests a lack of maturity.

Child schema in adult animals

The child pattern as a combination of optical characteristics has the attractiveness among adult no meaning male and female animals because the mating seasons of sexual cycle of the females and the males are dependent on smell - and behavioral signals of fertile females react. In the courtship behavior of many animals , however, there are also childlike behaviors that inhibit aggression .

In the breeding of pets it happens that the child scheme is abused as a breeding goal in order to make the bred animals appear attractive to potential buyers by appealing to the brood care instinct. This is how dog and cat breeds came into being, in which the animals in adulthood show skull deformations that correspond to the child's scheme. In veterinary medicine , this is called brachycephaly .

literature

  • Thomas R. Alley: Infantile head shape as an elicitor of adult protection. In: Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. Volume 29, No. 4, 1983, ISSN  0272-930X , pp. 411-427.
  • C. Braun, M. Gründl, C. Marberger, C. Scherber: Beautycheck. Causes and consequences of attractiveness. Final project report. (Retrieved on May 22, 2007 from Beautycheck Web site: http://www.beautycheck.de/cmsms/index.php/der-ganze-bericht )
  • Karl Grammer : Signals of love. The biological laws of partnership. dtv, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-423-30498-7 .
  • Michael R. Cunningham, Anita P. Barbee, Carolyn L. Pike: What do woman want? Facialmetric assessment on multiple motives in the perception of male facial physical attractiveness. In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Volume 59, No. 1, 1990, ISSN  0022-3514 , pp. 61-72.
  • Francine M. Deuisch, Carla M. Zalenski, Mary E. Clark: Is there a double standard of aging? In: Journal of Applied Social Psychology. Volume 16, No. 9, 1986, ISSN  1559-1816 , pp. 771–785.
  • Manfred Hassebrauck (Ed.): Physical attractiveness. Hogrefe, Göttingen 1993, ISBN 3-8017-0600-1 .
  • Nancy Hirschberg, Lawrence E. Jones, Michael Haggerty: What's in a face. Individual differences in face perception. In: Journal of Research in Personality Volume 12, No. 4, 1978, ISSN  0092-6566 , pp. 488-499.
  • Donald Symons : The evolution of human sexuality. Oxford University Press, New York 1979, ISBN 0-19-502535-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Konrad Lorenz: The innate forms of possible experience. In: Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie Vol. 5 Issue 2, 1943, pp. 274ff.
  2. ↑ Hartmut Solbach: Vita Nova. CC Buchners Verlag 2008. ISBN 3-7661-3323-3 . Page 291
  3. ^ Thomas R. Alley: Infantile Head Shape as an Elicitor of Adult Protection. In: Merrill-Palmer Quaterly , Vol. 29, No. 4, 1983, pp. 411-427.
  4. ↑ Down Soft Dino found on the website of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich .
  5. Jump up ↑ Christoph Braun, Martin Gründl, Claus Marberger, Christoph Scherber: Beautycheck - causes and consequences of attractiveness . University of Regensburg: Psychological Institute, September 22, 2003, DNB  1036999025 , urn : nbn: de: bsz: 291-psydok-83 ( full text [PDF]).
  6. ↑ Karl Grammer: Signals of love. The biological laws of partnership. dtv, Munich 2000, p. 188.
  7. ↑ Karl Grammer: Signals of love. The biological laws of partnership. dtv, Munich 2000, p. 183.
  8. ↑ Karl Grammer: Signals of love. The biological laws of partnership. dtv, Munich 2000, pp. 186-188.
  9. ↑ Melanie L. Glocker et al .: Baby schema modulates the brain reward system in nulliparous women. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106, 2009, p. 9115, doi : 10.1073 / pnas.0811620106 .