An Exploratory Study: The Existence of Independent Emotions of a Fetus

Many brilliant authors have discussed and theorized the beginning of human
mental life. Emotional experience is only one layer of someone’s psyche. In this study, the
authors explore if the fetus in the third trimester could experience emotions independently
from their mothers. The authors focused on changes in the autonomous nervous system
reflected in mothers’ and fetuses’ heart rates and heart rate variability as physiologic
measures of emotional experience. Emotions were elicited through music to which fetuses
and their mothers were exposed depending on the experimental group they belonged. The
data was retrieved from Ninety-three participants randomly distributed into three groups.
This study found that fetuses seemed to have experienced their mothers’ emotional
atmosphere and had distinct emotional experiences with their mothers.