Two years ago, I started a PhD in psychology. My research topic? Baby emotions. Methodology, difficulties encountered, bibliographical adventures, the interest of this study… I tell you all about the PhD adventure, as if you were there!

It all started when I was observing the angry face of a young child in a day-care center (yes, didn’t I tell you, I’m also a day-care psychologist!). You know those little humans who often have explosive reactions and don’t often listen to what they’re told? This little boy was particularly expressive: his eyebrows were furrowed, his gaze was fixed, his lips were pursed. I tried to guess, without over-interpreting, what feelings were hidden behind his facial features. Questions came to me in a jumble: what is this little boy feeling at 19 months old? How do emotions evolve as he develops? How did this emotion express itself when he had just come out of his mother’s womb? Here we go for a few years of doctoral research…

How does a doctorate work?

First step: ask yourself THE question… and find a thesis supervisor!

I could have asked my neighbor-who-had-three-kids these questions, or picked up one of those women’s magazines that talk about children’s emotions the way they talk about cheddar tortillas. In other words, without much conviction or real expertise. But then, stubborn as I am, I wanted to look into the matter with the rigor of a scientist. With a passion for developmental psychology and a background in affective and social neuroscience, I set myself a crazy challenge: to undertake a doctorate in psychology on the emotions of babies. And not just any babies! No, the ones who have just been born and have no real experience of life outside the womb. Newborn babies. The real ones. Questions popped into my head like fireworks: how are emotions expressed on the faces of newborns? Do their facial expressions convey mature emotions like those adults can feel (that would be too simple!)?

Second step: take stock of what other researchers have already said on the subject

Once I had my problem in mind, I immersed myself in the « literature » to find out what others had already written and/or found on the subject. But be warned: in the research world, the « literature » you read is not the literature you think it is. It’s not about devouring every Amélie Nothomb and Joël Dicker we come across. No, it’s about combing through all the gloomy scientific articles (most of them in English) that deal with our problem: just think, what did our friend Darwin have to say about baby emotions in his day? 150 years later, what’s new? And how do our animal friends express their emotions? Do they? Are the babies of depressed mothers really born less expressive than the babies of mothers who are doing well? The aim: to take stock of all the research on the subject and identify which sub-sections still need to be studied in greater depth, in order to complete the state of knowledge and make a small contribution to the edifice. It’s important to remember that when you’re conducting research, you’re often only adding a tiny pebble to an enormous stone edifice. It takes a great deal of time to build up a solid body of new knowledge, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.

In the specific case of my problem (that of newborn babies’ facial expressions), I faced two major difficulties. Firstly, I had to get to grips with and understand the jargon used by emotion researchers. Reading a scientific article is never easy, as the concepts involved can be so complex to grasp. Just imagine when the articles are in a language other than your mother tongue! And then, when I finally managed to read this research fluently, another incident occurred: I was surprised to find that each author had his or her own point of view, and that few people actually agreed on the question of newborn expressions. Faced with this theoretical jungle, I had to develop my own position… Fortunately, a doctoral student is never alone. My research supervisor (known in the trade as a DR) was there to support me, encourage me, advise me and offer me chocolate wafers when my spirits were low – support that is so vital (by the way, although I use « I » in this article, « we » would be just as appropriate).

Third step: find little guinea pigs

Based on my previous research, my interests and the areas I wanted to explore further, I set out to find little guinea pigs to analyze. In other words, real babies!

This stage consists in selecting a profile of participants we wish to study, according to our problem (they may be elderly people, 2-month-old babies, 6-year-old children, individuals suffering from a particular pathology or others who are, on the contrary, in great shape…). This is an energy-intensive stage in the life of any doctoral student. Then you have to choose the situation in which you want to analyze your guinea pigs, and find an objective way of dissecting their behavior. In my case, since I was interested in the facial expressions of human newborns, I naturally chose to work on… human newborns. How logical. I chose to focus on videos of exchanges between mothers/fathers and their one- or two-day-old babies. These scenes were filmed by my great doctoral colleagues in the laboratory where I’m doing my thesis (so I didn’t have to go through the long period of « recruiting » participants and collecting data)! These episodes, which last about ten minutes at most, take place in the maternity ward. They are beautiful scenes full of tenderness and affection, where one of the parents exchanges with his or her baby. Some sing to them, others devour them with their eyes, while still others tell them stories. Some of these babies are sleeping, others are crying, and still others are scrutinizing their surroundings with intense gaze, as if they didn’t want to miss a crumb!

Fourth step: build a grid to analyze their expressions

Once the videos had been selected, all that remained was to find a way of objectively analyzing the facial expressions of these little guinea pigs. And that’s a different kettle of fish! To maintain scientific and methodological rigor, the system for rating facial expressions has to be solid and sufficiently reliable. And, above all, it must produce similar results, regardless of who is « sticking » to the coding (yes, I do mean « sticking », because coding videos, second by second, is the work of an obsessive ant with a geek background). This is what we call micro-analysis. With the help of my research director, I’ve built a grid that allows me to deconstruct the facial expressions of these babies. But what does this grid contain? 3 main parts: 1/ eyebrows: are they raised, furrowed or neutral? 2/ mouth: is it closed, open, smiling? 3/ Eyes: are they open, closed, half-closed? The idea is to code these three parts of the face independently of each other. I start by coding the eyebrows, then the eyes and finally the mouth. Knowing that it takes around 45 minutes to code three minutes of video, that each video has to be coded three times (once for each region of the face) and that there are around fifteen videos to code, you do the math! Then all I have to do is combine these three parts and observe which facial expression emerges: is it one of pleasure? Displeasure? Pain? Disgust? One question must be burning in your mind: « But, Heloise, why complicate your life by breaking down each face into three parts when you could just code each expression as a whole? And you’re right! That’s the art of research. Breaking down the face into its three parts means greater precision and reliability. The researcher has the precision of a surgeon. He’s all about the details of the details of the details. What’s more, reconstructing the overall emotion from its component parts means we can avoid accusations of subjective coding.

Like any PhD student, I’m often asked the same question (more or less tactfully, in fact): « What’s the point of your thesis? Bingo. It’s THE million-dollar question you need to be prepared for. And I’m going to answer it. My exploratory research into the facial expressions of these little humans will, I hope, help adults to better identify an infant’s emotions, and not over-interpret them (just because he’s crying doesn’t mean he’s in pain, for example). This research will also make it possible to study the variability of children’s profiles from the very start of life, and provide food for thought on the very first signs of pathologies such as autism. Finally, this research will highlight the fact that certain emotions are present from birth, and that facial expressions evolve rapidly as children develop and interact with their environment.

There, I think I’ve said it all. As I haven’t yet finished this famous fourth part, I won’t be able to tell you any more at the moment!

The confession of the end

Before I leave you, I’d like to make a confession. The reason I embarked on this PhD adventure was, of course, to better understand how the very first emotions develop on a human face. But that’s not all. Keeping a foot in the rigorous world of research is important to me. Why do you ask? Because it allows me to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and the field, between the research laboratory and the nursery. As a psychologist and trainer, I believe it’s vital that the knowledge of early childhood professionals is up-to-date, accurate and rigorous. This is the best safeguard against over-interpretation and slippage. Thanks to the development of baby investigation tools, we’ve learned more about the young child in a century than in a millennium (I’m exaggerating a little, but not that much). So let’s make the most of it!

At the end of this little testimonial, I hope two things: 1) that this article has made you a little more aware of how research is conducted (without scaring you too much) and 2) that one day I’ll have the opportunity to… celebrate the end of my thesis with you!

See you soon!

Héloïse