Hostname: page-component-686fd747b7-hzbls Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-13T11:24:41.262Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Heightened fearfulness in infants is not adaptive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2023

Marissa Ogren Open the ORCID record for Marissa Ogren [Opens in a new window] ,
Lisa Feldman Barrett ,
Katie Hoemann  and
Vanessa LoBue
Marissa Ogren
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ 07103, USA marissa.ogren@rutgers.edu; https://www.childstudycenter-rutgers.com/; vlobue@psychology.rutgers.edu
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA l.barrett@northeastern.edu; https://www.affective-science.org/ Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, USA Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA
Katie Hoemann
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium katie.hoemann@kuleuven.be
Vanessa LoBue
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ 07103, USA marissa.ogren@rutgers.edu; https://www.childstudycenter-rutgers.com/; vlobue@psychology.rutgers.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Grossmann proposes the “fearful ape hypothesis,” suggesting that heightened fearfulness in early life is evolutionarily adaptive. We question this claim with evidence that (1) perceived fearfulness in children is associated with negative, not positive long-term outcomes; (2) caregivers are responsive to all affective behaviors, not just those perceived as fearful; and (3) caregiver responsiveness serves to reduce perceived fearfulness.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 46 , 2023 , e73
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barrett, L. F., Adolphs, R., Marsella, S., Martinez, A. M., & Pollak, S. D. (2019). Emotional expressions reconsidered: Challenges to inferring emotion from human facial movements. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 20, 1–68. doi: 10.1177/1529100619832930CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bennett, D. S., Bendersky, M., & Lewis, M. (2002). Facial expressivity at 4 months: A context by expression analysis. Infancy, 1, 97–113. doi: 10.1207/S15327078IN0301_5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornstein, M. H., Putnick, D. L., Rigo, P., Esposito, G., Swain, J. E., Suwalsky, J. T. D., … Venuti, P. (2017). Neurobiology of culturally common maternal responses to infant cry. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, E9465–E9473. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1712022114CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bornstein, M. H., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Tal, J., Ludemann, P., Toda, S., Rahn, C. W., … Vardi, D. (1992). Maternal responsiveness to infants in three societies: The United States, France, and Japan. Child Development, 63, 808–821. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1992.tb01663.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Buss, K. A., & McDoniel, M. E. (2016). Improving the prediction of risk for anxiety development in temperamentally fearful children. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25, 14–20. doi: 10.1177/0963721415611601CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Callaghan, B., Meyer, H., Opendak, M., Van Tieghem, M., Harmon, C., Li, A., … Tottenham, N. (2019). Using a developmental ecology framework to align fear neurobiology across species. Annual Reviews of Clinical Psychology, 15, 345–369. doi: 10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-050718-095727CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Camras, L. A., Oster, H., Bakeman, R., Meng, Z., Ujiie, T., & Campos, J. J. (2007). Do infants show distinct negative facial expressions for fear and anger? Emotional expression in 11-month-old European American, Chinese, and Japanese infants. Infancy, 11, 131–155. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-7078.2007.tb00219.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chóliz, M., Fernández-Abascal, E. G., & Martínez-Sánchez, F. (2013). Infant crying: Pattern of weeping, recognition of emotion and affective reactions in observers. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 15, 978–988. doi: 10.5209/rev_SJOP.2012.v15.n3.39389CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chronis-Tuscano, A., Dengan, K. A., Pine, D. S., Perez-Edgar, K., Henderson, H. A., Diaz, Y., … Fox, N. A. (2009). Stable early maternal report of behavioral inhibition predicts lifetime social anxiety disorders in adolescence. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 48, 928–935. doi: 10.1097/CHI.0b013e3181ae09dfCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clauss, J. A., & Blackford, J. U. (2012). Behavioral inhibition and risk for developing social anxiety disorder: A meta-analytic study. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 51, 1066–1075. doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2012.08.002CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coplan, R. J., Wilson, J., Frohlick, S. L., & Zelenski, J. (2006). A person-oriented analysis of behavioral inhibition and behavioral activation in children. Personality and Individual Differences, 41, 917–927. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2006.02.019CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, N. A., Barker, T. V., White, L. K., Suway, J. G., & Pine, D. S. (2013). Commentary: To intervene or not? Appreciating or treating individual differences in childhood temperament – Remarks on Rapee. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54, 789–790.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fox, N. A., Buzzell, G. A., Morales, S., Valadez, E. A., Wilson, M., & Henderson, H. A. (2021). Understanding the emergence of social anxiety in children with behavioral inhibition. Biological Psychiatry, 89, 681–689. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2020.10.004CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gee, D. G., Gabard-Durnam, L., Telzer, E. H., Humphreys, K. L., Goff, B., Shapiro, M., … Tottenham, N. (2014). Psychological Science, 25, 2067–2078. doi: 10.1002/dev.20531CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, M., Muris, P., Loxton, H., & Wege, A. (2017). Anxiety-proneness, anxiety symptoms, and the role of parental overprotection in young South African children. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26, 262–270. doi: 10.1007/s10826-016-0545-zCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kivijarvi, M., Voeten, M. J. M., Niemela, P., Raiha, H., Lertola, K., & Piha, J. (2001). Maternal sensitivity behavior and infant behavior in early interaction. Infant Mental Health Journal, 22, 627–640. doi: 10.1002/imhj.1023CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mesman, J., Oster, H., & Camras, L. (2012). Parental sensitivity to infant distress: What do discrete negative emotions have to do with it? Attachment & Human Development, 14, 337–348. doi: 10.1080/14616734.2012.691649CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandstrom, A., Uher, R., & Pavlova, B. (2020). Prospective association between childhood behavioral inhibition and anxiety: A meta-analysis. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 48, 57–66. doi: 10.1007/s10802-019-00588-5Google ScholarPubMed
Sears, M. S., Repetti, R. L., Reynolds, B. M., & Sperling, J. B. (2014). A naturalistic observational study of children's expressions of anger in the family context. Emotion, 14, 272–283. doi: 10.1037/a0034753CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thompson-Booth, C., Viding, E., Mayes, L. C., Rutherford, H. J. V., Hodsoll, S., & McCrory, E. J. (2013). Here's looking at you, kid: Attention to infant emotional faces in mothers and non-mothers. Developmental Science, 17, 35–46. doi: 10.1111/desc.12090CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tottenham, N. (2012). Human amygdala development in the absence of species-expected caregiving. Developmental Psychobiology, 54, 598–611. doi: 10.1002/dev.20531CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Brakel, A. M. L., Muris, P., Bogels, S. M., & Thomassen, C. (2006). A multifactorial model for the etiology of anxiety in non-clinical adolescents: Main and interactive effects of behavioral inhibition, attachment, and parental rearing. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 15, 568–578. doi: 10.1007/s10826-006-9061-xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Rooij, S. J. H., Cross, D., Stevens, J. S., Vance, L. A., Kim, Y. J., Bradley, B., … Jovanovic, T. (2017). Maternal buffering of fear-potentiated startle in children and adolescents with trauma exposure. Social Neuroscience, 12, 22–31. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2016.1164244CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vreeke, L. J., Muris, P., Mayer, B., Huijding, J., & Rapee, R. M. (2013). Skittish, shielded, and scared: Relations among behavioral inhibition, overprotective parenting, and anxiety in native and non-native Dutch preschool children. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 27, 703–710. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2013.09.006CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Williams, L. R., Degnan, K., Perez-Edgar, K., Henderson, H. A., Rubin, K. H., Pine, D. S., … Fox, N. A. (2009). Impact of behavioral inhibition and parenting style on internalizing and externalizing problems from early childhood through adolescence. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 37, 1063–1075. doi: 10.1007/s10802-009-9331-3CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed