Infants relax in response to unfamiliar foreign lullabies

When we played songs from around the world to infants, we found that infants relax more in response to lullabies compared to other song types in the Natural History of Song (NHS) Discography - dance, healing, and love songs. Below you can explore the songs we used in this study; to learn more about our results, check out our paper in Nature Human Behavior. You can check out these and other songs from the Natural History of Song in the NHS Discography Explorer and in our World Music Quiz!

Green rows indicate songs with a perceived sex of female - Orange indicate a perceived sex of male.

LullabiesPaired non-lullabies
SocietyRegionLanguageAudioTypeSocietyRegionLanguageAudio
SaamiScandinaviaLuk SaamiLoveNenetsNorth AsiaTundra Nenets
NahuaMaya AreaWestern NahualtLoveSerbsSoutheastern EuropeSerbian Standard
Igulik InuitArctic and SubarcticWestern Canadia InuktitutDanceChachiNorthwestern South AmericaCha’palaa
KunaCentral AmericaBorder KunaLoveHighland ScotsBritish IslesScottish Gaelic
IroquoisEastern WoodlandsCherokeeLoveKurdsMiddle EastCentral Kurdish
HopiSouthwest and BasinHopiHealingHawaiiansPolynesiaHawaiian
OnaSouthern South AmericaSelk’namLoveChuukMicronesiaChuukese
Highland ScotsBritish IslesScottish GaelicHealingSeriNorthern MexicoSeri