PONE-D-20-17379

The role of sex and femininity in preferences for unfamiliar infants among chinese adults

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Dajun Zhang,

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: 1. Do not repeat and remove “We assessed this question using a self-reported method and behavioral responses to infant faces” (p.13, line 119)

2. When recruiting the subjects, was AGE (e.g., 18 to 40) an inclusion criterion because the focus of this study was about infant preferences among childless adults. If not, it would be hard to believe no one in this sample was above 40 years of age. If this is an inclusion criterion, then this study would be about infant preference among child-bearing age adults.

3. You describe the subjects being “healthy childless adults” (p.13). Does it mean that health status and childless were two of the inclusion criteria? How do you determine they were healthy?

4. Remove “to participate” on line 134 (p.14). Informed consent is always for participation; to remove these two words so that it does not seem to be reductant with the word participants in the same sentence.

5. The term “adult women” should be just “women” which already implies adults; otherwise, they are girls, children, or adolescents.

6. Method: The research questions need rewording to show the “sex differential” variable is about the childless adults, not about the infants’ gender preference. It was clear after reading the results but not clear at the beginning. If this is a research question, it must be reworded to something like this: This study seems to have only one major question: “To what extent do gender and gender role orientation among childless adults influence their infant preferences?” The manipulation of providing laughing and crying facial expressions is a method to check if the findings to the answer to this question may change. After the research question, you may add a question with a procedure of manipulation, e.g., “In this study, a manipulation procedure has been added to test the following: Would a change in the infant’s emotion (from a neutral facial expression to laughing or crying) change these childless adults’ original infant preferences?”

7. One finding: “It is also interesting that we found that Chinese men internalized more masculinity than women but showed similar femininity internalization to that of women” What does it really imply? It sounds that women have become less feminine and men become multi-oriented in their gender roles? Wonder how the feminine characteristics measure fits well with young adults vs. those in their 30s and 40s because the educational and socialization process between these two groups of adults may be very different due to the economic and cultural shift with China’s economy growth in the last two decades. While age does not seem to correlate with femininity, it is significantly correlated with masculinity, and femininity and masculinity are also significantly correlated. Would men on the other hand tend to be more feminine?

8. Additional editorial support is needed. E.g., do not start a new paragraph with “However”.

9. Interesting findings but not very clear about how the feminine vs masculine characteristics are internalized by men (if this is a reason to further explore the impact of the femininity factor.

Reviewer #2: This is a novel study on the effect of gender role on infant face preferences. Motivated by the parental investment theory and social role theory, the authors hypothesize that instead of dichotomic difference between the two sexes with respect to preferences to infant faces, there might exist more gradient difference in viewing infant faces due to gender role orientation. Combining questionnaire and behavioral tests, the authors found that gender role affects males’ responses more than females. I found that article well written, the analysis sound, and the results interesting. I only have very minor suggestions for the authors to incorporate into their revision before this work is published.

1. The introduction needs to mention previous research on infant face preferences by the Chinese population, and how the Chinse participants are expected to behave similarly or differently given what we have known about the cross-cultural differences. The discussion covered some of these points, but it will be very helpful that the context is properly laid out at in the introduction.

2. Likewise, the introduction needs to discuss ethnic composition of the Chinese population and its potential impact before mentioning of the inclusion of different ethnic groups in the methods.

3. Page 6, the last line, the period is missing.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Monit Cheung, PhD

Reviewer #2: No

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The role of sex and femininity in preferences for unfamiliar infants among chinese adults

PONE-D-20-17379R1

Dear Dr. Dajun Zhang,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Yuka Kotozaki

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: All comments are addressed or placed in future study recommendations. This article has some unique aspects on femininity that may have been affected by the one-child policy. While the two-child policy is in effect, the previously policy has deeply affected current adults' mind toward the gender of children.

Reviewer #2: All my previous comments have been adequately addressed. I therefore recommend publication of this article.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Monit Cheung

Reviewer #2: Yes: Fangfang Li