Child care and Disease avoidance: exploring motivational systems trade-offs

Individuals responsible for child care are consistently exposed to children’s excretion pathogens, yet they must still take care of their children, especially when the children are infected. Our objective was to investigate whether exposure to infected infants would negatively impact people’s emotions towards cute babies, and vice-versa. Moreover, as cooperative breeding is a hallmark of our species, we also explored whether this response would differ between child carers and non-child carers. In two studies, 128 participants rated how much disgust they felt (disgust score) when watching 10 pictures of infected babies after viewing cute babies or furniture pictures (study1) and how much tenderness they felt (tenderness score) when watching 10 pictures of cute babies after viewing infected babies or furniture pictures (study 2). Priming participants with pictures of cute babies did not significantly impact their disgust response towards infected children. In contrast, priming with infected babies led to a reduction in tenderness felt towards cute babies, but only for non-carers. This result is consistent with the possibility that child carers desensitize themselves through exposure or that people less prone to disgust when exposed to pathogens related to caregiving situations invest more in child care.