Social cognitive explanations for ‘baby brain’ in pregnancy

There is a widely held perception that women have reduced cognitive abilities during their pregnancy and into the immediate postpartum period, a concept referred to colloquially as mummy brain, pregnesia, or, more commonly, ‘baby brain’ (Brett & Baxendale, 2001). However, the current evidence base, which spans cognitive, neuropsychological, and evolutionary perspectives, has vast inconsistencies and is generally inconclusive (Davies et al., 2018). There are also concerns with the robustness, reliability, and suitability of these research paradigms to understand ‘baby brain’ in its social context (Hurt, 2011). Therefore, the mixed-methods work presented in this thesis aims to investigate empirically how ‘baby brain’ may be better understood through a social psychological lens. This thesis starts with an overview of the chapters (Chapter 1) and a critical review of the current ‘baby brain’ literature (Chapter 2), before then qualitatively exploring pregnant women’s first-hand accounts of their memory changes using qualitative content analysis (Study 1). The contents of pregnancy stereotypes are then investigated (Study 2, Study 3). Finally, this work investigates experimentally how stereotype threat theory (Study 4, Study 5) and objectification theory (Study 6, Study 7) may account for differences in pregnant women’s memory functioning and how objectification alters perceptions of women in pregnancy (Study 8). Overall, this research found that pregnant women are stereotyped to have poorer cognitive abilities and do self-report negative changes to their memory. However, stereotype threat and self-objectification manipulations did not harm memory performance in the hypothesised ways. Taken together, this work has important implications for understanding ‘baby brain’ in pregnancy, while also testing the core mechanisms of both stereotype threat theory and objectification theory in unique and understudied populations of women.