A Pilot Study of the Impact of Brief Exposure to Images of Breastfeeding Mothers on Attitudes Toward Mother’s Breastfeeding in Public

Abstract

The wider societal attitudes held toward mothers’ breastfeeding in public seem to impact infant feeding choices. The present study employed an online (N = 396) experimental pretest–posttest design set to examine whether a mere exposure effect of briefly viewing and rating the valence of four different images of public breastfeeding (i.e., mother and baby alone, females in background, males in background, and females and males in background) would impact on participants’ attitudes toward a mother breastfeeding in public. There was a marginal increase in the positive attitudes toward public breastfeeding at Time 2 when compared with Time 1 following exposure to the four images. These findings support a potential positive mere exposure effect in enhancing attitudes toward breastfeeding in public. This suggests a greater use of promotional material using visual stimuli may improve societal acceptance of breastfeeding in public.