Babies Feel Jealousy At Three Months

Source: The Canadian Press

Posted: 10/23/08 4:10PM

Filed Under: Family

TORONTO — Babies can be cute and cuddly, cranky and colicky. But now, a study suggests that babies as young as three months old exhibit signs of something not commonly associated with such tender souls - jealousy.

The research wasn't undertaken to study jealousy; the goal was simply to find out what babies understood about the communicative motives of adults, says Prof. Maria Legerstee of the department of psychology at York University.

"Do they understand what we are intending when we talk to them? Are we willing, are we unable to talk to them?" she wondered.

Altogether, Legerstee and her team studied close to 50 babies who were brought in to her lab by their mothers.

Legerstee found that when a female researcher drank water in front of the baby while looking at the baby, the baby didn't mind.

But if the researcher's face was still and she looked at the baby without talking or doing anything else, the baby got upset. The babies would have a sad facial expression and look away a bit.

Another experiment involved a stranger speaking to the mother. The babies didn't seem to mind when the mother was interrupted by a stranger who would basically deliver a monologue to the mother - as long as the mother didn't talk to the stranger, explained Legerstee.

"But if she was interrupted and both engaged in a dialogue, an active dialogue, had lots of fun and excluded the baby, baby got very upset."

In fact, Legerstee said the baby would behave in a way that they had never seen before in their research.

"And in a very different way than I had ever experienced, that I'd ever seen in my 20 years in front of the infant chair," she elaborated.

"They would vocalize very intensely, strange vocalization - 'ahhh-ahhh' - and they would play with their feet, suck on their toes, turn around in their chair."

The study will be included in her book entitled "Handbook of Jealousy: Theories, Principles and Multidisciplinary Approaches," to be published toward the end of 2009.

It's not the first time that what appears to be jealousy has been observed and studied in babies - Legerstee says her co-editor on the book found it at six and 12 months.

"But I'm the first who has confirmed the evidence in kind of comparing the jealousy evocation condition, as we call it, with all kinds of other conditions, to affirm that it's not simply a response to a lack of attention or the baby becoming tired or the baby being bored."

The responses in the babies at six months are a bit stronger than at three months, but the differences between the various situations remained the same, she said.

So what's a parent to do with this information about baby's jealousy?

"Nothing," said Legerstee. "In North America jealousy is not seen as a normative response. In North America, jealousy is often seen as something that is caused by parents, for instance. It's seen as sibling rivalry."

She said the love relationship, the social bond between mother and child is an innate response.

"It's part of the mammalian brain - we accept as normal between baby and mother. The jealousy response is just as normal."

And what did moms involved in the study have to offer on the subject of jealousy?

"I have conversations with these mothers, and they said 'You know, I knew this,' and 'He does this when I'm on the phone,"' Legerstee said.

"Mothers are aware."