14 DAY TRIAL // Expectant mommies are more than just a ball of nerves and mood swings, a new study cited by New Scientist says. Because of the raging hormones, pregnant women can identify signs of anger or aggression on someone’s face with more accuracy than other women who are not expecting and men, the study has learned.
Researchers had previously established that, during certain phases of the menstrual cycle, women were more able to read emotions on someone’s face, which was explained by a peak in the levels of the hormone progesterone. As it turns out, the same applies for pregnant women: they can similarly detect emotions of joy and happiness, but also pick up on negative emotions with more accuracy, especially later in pregnancy.
The study was conducted by Rebecca Pearson and researchers at the University of Bristol, UK, and included 76 pregnant women. They were shown 60 computer-generated faces, to which they were asked to assign one of six emotions. The study included two meetings for this purpose: one before the 14th week of pregnancy, and one in the 34th week, with the most impressive results achieved in late pregnancy.
Thus, researchers determined that happiness and surprise was an emotion women picked up on to the same extent regardless of how far along they were. On the other hand, faces expressing anger, fear and disgust were more easily read in late pregnancy, researchers found out, which could prompt the explanation that the development of said “superpowers” acts as a defense mechanism for the mother and child.
In other words, women become more alert, which enables them to spot potential threats and act accordingly. The downside to this could be that pregnant women who are also clinically anxious might exaggerate in their interpretation of the emotions they read on someone’s face or, as Pearson says, “they might interpret negative or emotional things around them in a slightly more sensitive way.”
As New Scientist also points out, the next step now is to determine whether mothers and pregnant women are more likely to read the face of a baby than women who have never given birth.