The Still Face experiment and the secrets of human connection
It is not news to us that at the very forefront of human needs, is the need for connection. But do you ever wonder how far back these needs go? When was the first time we ever felt the need for connection and how much is this need really understood?
This is where the Still Face Experiment proves to be a very useful and insightful experiment. This experiment was first conducted by Dr. Edward Tronick of UMass Boston’s Infant-Parent Mental Health Program. This study was first published in 1975 and primarily deals with infant-caregiver interactions and is also called the Face-to-Face Still Face Paradigm. Diving into the experiment, it was conducted in 3 stages:
1. A Baseline /normal infant-caregiver interaction
This is where a parent or caregiver is seen playing normally with the infant, attuned to their actions and reacting with smiles or laughter, fully engaging with the infant in a healthy manner.
2. Still-Face interaction
This is where the experiment comes into effect, where the caregiver or parent has a still or poker face and doesn’t show any facial emotion to the infant. There is no smiling, touching, laughing or any sort of engaging with the infant.
3. Reunion
This is the last stage of the experiment where the caregiver returns to the normal or baseline stage of interaction (stage 1). Back to engaging and laughing with the infant.
Each episode would typically last for 2–3 minutes and with infants from the range of 2–12 months.
In the second stage of the experiment, noticing the blank expressions on the face of the caregiver, the infant would start to cry, show frustration and scream. Some would even bite themselves to get a reaction. But the signature characteristic exhibited would be gaze-aversion where the child would avoid direct eye contact and look away in distress. In the third stage, the infant would start to regain a sense of connection and almost instantaneously go back to laughing and engaging with the caregiver.
This is how far back our need for connection goes and not surprisingly the patterns of our attachment styles, emotional regulation and coping mechanisms are formed. If anything can be learned from this, it would be how important and formative our primary interactions with our caregivers are and how it could set the tone for a well-adjusted emotionally regulated child far into adulthood.
Emotional development or the lack thereof, changes our perspective and can severely hinder our emotional growth if our needs are not met. In my opinion, this should be taught in schools and colleges to understand the severity and implications of emotional neglect so we can evolve as a well-adjusted and emotionally balanced society which would also subsequently help our mental health issues.
As Carl Jung famously stated ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’ This nuanced understanding of early human connection serves as a compass for fostering emotional intelligence and long term development.
