A new study has revealed that hearing a baby cry, especially when the baby is in pain can physically cause an adult's face to flush.
The research, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface revealed that this reaction is real and may be a natural way to prompt adults to respond and take action.
The cries that come from a baby in serious distress are physically more intense and chaotic than cries caused by minor discomfort.
A baby’s cries of pain are made differently from other sounds they make.
By forcefully tightening their ribcage and pushing air through their vocal cords, they produce loud, uneven and harsh sounds, which scientists call “nonlinear phenomena” or NLPs.
Researchers in France studied how these cries affect adults’ nervous systems subconsciously and what physical reactions they cause.
They studied how 41 adults including 21 men and 20 women, averaging 35 years old reacted to the sounds of babies cries.
The recordings included 23 clips from 16 babies, showing both mild discomfort, like during a bath and serious pain, like from a vaccine injection.
As the participants listened, a thermal camera tracked changes to their face temperature.
Study concluded with the results that babies' more chaotic cries trigger stronger physical reactions in adults, like flushing of the face.
Moreover, both men and women reacted the same way, confirming that everyone can reliably detect when a baby is in pain.
"While our results sound interesting and new, this study remains rather preliminary and raises a number of questions, both in terms of interpreting the results and from a methodological point of view," the authors noted.