Are ugly babies discriminated against?

The problem of cuteness discrimination is more acute when the baby has a physical abnormality. Brain scans show that adults — who usually have immediate brain activity when gazing on an infant’s face — will show less activity when babies have a “craniofacial abnormality that disrupts the typical cute facial composition.”

In the real world, this plays out with tragic consequences. Babies with cleft lips and palates are more likely to have “adverse outcomes in child development, including cognitive problems,” the paper writes. “These problems can at least partly be attributed to early disruptions in mother-child interactions, specifically a lack of all-important maternal responsiveness.” The implication is that the mother is less responsive because the child is less cute.