Pygmalion in the cradle: observer bias against cocaine-exposed infants

This study examined whether the widely disseminated negative image of the "cocaine baby" would lead adults to perceive a videotaped unexposed infant more negatively simply because they had been told the infant was prenatally cocaine-exposed. Two hundred and forty-nine students from three state universities used a seven-point Likert scale to rate either an African-American or a white female infant on 20 bipolar adjective-pairs. As predicted, participants who observed a labeled infant rated her more negatively than did those for whom the infant had not been labeled as cocaine-exposed. The potentially negative consequences of this documented bias toward cocaine-exposed infants should both alert and concern professionals and researchers. If adults view the behavior of a nonexposed infant more negatively merely because they believe that the infant has been exposed, then parents (biological and adoptive), professionals, and researchers may view and respond to the behavior of infants who are cocaine-exposed more negatively. Transactional models of development suggest a potential for self-fulfilling prophecy.