The Psychology of Cuteness: 'I Just Want to Squish That Face!'
By Ayah Kurdi
A sleeping baby, a fluffy dog, miniature food--all have something in common: they are cute! I remember all throughout my younger brother’s tiresome nights of crying as a baby, he never failed to uphold his irresistible cuteness. I noticed the varying reactions people experienced when they would interact with him. Many were eager to hold him, while others were more awkward.
But there was another reaction: the aggressive one.
I’d hear things such as, “I just want to bite his arm!” Interestingly, before my little brother, the baby in the house was my pet Sheila, who is a bearded dragon. Although she has scales, spikes, and a tail, which are not typically features associated with cuteness, I’ve always found Sheila exceedingly adorable and fascinating, the way she snuggles when she wants to sleep, and how she licks the air to explore the environment she is in. Others are not always as zealous in interacting with her. People often find Sheila frightening, even though she is completely harmless. So what makes an individual perceive something as cute, and how does this affect one’s behavior?
Cuteness is often categorized as a physical characteristic; however, it is also an emotion as it creates hormonal responses and affects behavior.
In the Oxford University article “How Cute Things Hijack Our Brains and Drive Behaviour,” Morten L. Kringelbach describes what occurs in the brain when encountering something cute, “it ignites fast brain activity in the orbitofrontal cortex region, which are linked to emotion and pleasure” (Kringelbach). The orbitofrontal cortex is a part of the prefrontal cortex; it is located at the very front of the brain. This area is in charge of regulating emotion and decision-making. When these emotions are not being regulated, the feelings become overwhelming. The article “Emotions and the Brain – Or How to Master “The Force”,” by Raschle, Tshomba, Menks, Fehlbaum, and Stadler, explains that when anger is not regulated, it can be expressed through violence (Raschle et al). Anger is in reference to negative emotions, but this same concept of how overwhelming emotions are expressed can be applied to positive emotions.
When there are overwhelming emotions of cuteness, it can be expressed through cute aggression.
A Yale study by Oriana R. Aragón, Margaret S. Clark, Rebecca L. Dyer, and John A. Bargh explores various reactions in positive situations that would normally be reserved for negative expressions. The team defines this with the term dimorphous which “occur during situations…when they perceive that a point has been reached at which their emotions have become unmanageable” (Aragón et al). Dimorphous expressions occur when there is intense positive emotion during situations of graduating or the birth of one’s children. A survey was conducted on dimorphous items where “Participants were assigned randomly to view the more-infantile or the less-infantile photographs and to endorse statements designed to capture an overall positive appraisal of the stimuli and how those stimuli made the participant feel” (Aragón et al). It was found that more-infantile images were associated with being cute, morally good, they provoked more overwhelming positive emotions, and caused more expressions of care (Aragón et al). It is not intended to harm, but rather the brain’s way of regulating the positive emotion from the cuteness.
In terms of cuteness, babies often come to mind, which reveals cuteness from an evolutionary standpoint. The relationship between parents and infants is a complex biological connection, because babies are completely dependent, so their cuteness can be seen as a protective mechanism to ensure survival.
In the report On Cuteness: Unlocking the Parental Brain and Beyond, Kringelbach together with Eloise Stark, Catherine Alexander, Professor Marc Bornstein, and Professor Alan Stein explored how cuteness can enable nurturing instincts. Cuteness can trigger empathy and compassion, which can transcend one’s morals of consideration. This emotion is used commonly with marketing by including images of babies or animals which can encourage money for charities (Kringelbach). Different functions in babies impact biologically relevant stimuli on brain networks related to motivation, pleasure, and learning in adults which causes them to perceive children as cute.
This biological connection in relation to cuteness is relevant to various stimuli. For example, when babies cry, as frustrating as it can be at times, it is very alerting and it immediately catches attention.
The crying signals something is wrong and triggers nurturing instincts as it is an automatic response to worry. This same nurturing instinct can come to be triggered in response to cuteness. Cuteness is often identified through physical features: large eyes, round cheeks, and a large head relative to body size. However, in the report On Cuteness: Unlocking the Parental Brain and Beyond by Kringelbach, it is established that cuteness can be found through all human senses. Similar to crying, laughing ignites brain processes of protection from cuteness by sound, even though it is a positive stimulus. The article “Emotions and the Brain – Or How to Master “The Force”,” by Raschle, Tshomba, Menks, Fehlbaum, and Stadler explains what emotion is, “Emotions are feelings that (1) are caused by situations that are meaningful or important to you, (2) are something you feel or show through your body language” (Raschle et al). Scents associated with certain situations can be described as cute, even though they themselves may not typically be. Scents of playdough or baby powder are positive stimuli that can create a nurturing attraction to babies because of their relation to babies, demonstrating that the nurturing instinct caused by cuteness goes beyond only visually; it can be triggered by scent and sound.
Along with babies, animals are commonly associated with cuteness.
Pets are domesticated animals, so they have a similar dependence on babies, and need care; however, some wild animals are also identified as cute, so it is not limited to pets. The connection between babies and animals is stimuli. Professor Nittono defines the concept of baby schema as a set of physical features that elicit a cute feeling, proposed by Konrad Lorenz in 1943. The seven features are: a large head relative to body size, a high and protruding forehead, large eyes below the horizontal midline of the skull, short and thick extremities, a plump body shape, soft body surface, and chubby cheeks (Nittono).
While babies have these physical features, the concept of baby schema is not only applied to them. When compared, Professor Nittono observed that babies of baboons and macaques, though more biologically similar to humans, do not have baby schema, while baby polar bears and Siberian tigers do. This confirmed baby schema can be applied to babies and young animals, which both possess a theme of young age. Professor Nittono conducted a surveyed experiment, and it was found that an elderly man smiling was high in terms of kawaii but low in infantility. So features of baby schema relating to cuteness were successfully applied to a range of things with different ages and species. Through these observations, it is evident that cuteness is independent of infertility, though there is intersectionality between them.
With all these aspects considered, cuteness at its core is an emotion that is triggered by a variety of stimuli and is identified by anything that has a baby schema.
When humans encounter something cute, it releases feelings of pleasure, nurturing, and care, and when these feelings are overwhelming, they can be expressed through cute aggression to regulate the emotion. And this concept of cuteness is ambiguous across different cultures, similar to how beauty standards are. In the conference “Beyond Cuteness: An Emerging Field of the Psychology of “Kawaii,” Professor Hiroshi Nittono spoke about the psychology of the Japanese term “kawaii,” which is a culture of cuteness by observing the diversity in the things that humans identify as cute. The studies used to collect data were conducted with participants of a variety of races, and each was compared. For example, Japanese culture overall demonstrated a trend of being more tolerant in the range of things identified as cute. Comparing the perceptions of cuteness amongst different cultures allows connections to social constructs to be identified.
Some people may not find Sheila cute because she does not have much baby schema and they are not used to lizards being considered socially cute. I have been with her for seven years, so I know her little behaviors; I know the fresh scent she has when she has just taken a warm bath; I know the way she snuggles into things when she wants to sleep; and I take care of her so I have those nurturing instincts in some ways. As for my little brother, it is because he had a baby schema which created an overwhelming positive emotion of cuteness for some people. So the urge to squish something cute is okay, as long as you don’t go too far with it!
SOURCES:
Association for Psychological Science. (2015). Dimorphous Expressions of Positive Emotion: Displays of Both Care and Aggression in Response to Cute Stimuli. Yale University. www.associationforpsychologicalscience.com.
Kringelbach, Mortel. “Babies Don’t Just Look Cute, Scientists Find.” University of Oxford. (2016, June 7). www.universityofoxford.com.
Kringelbach, Mortel. “How Cute Things Hijack Our Brains and Drive Behaviour.” University of Oxford. The Conversation. (2016, June 4). www.universityofoxford.com.
Nittono, H. (2019, September 5). Beyond Cuteness: An Emerging Field of the Psychology of “Kawaii” by Professor Hiroshi Nittono [Presentation session]. The 7th Asian Conference on Psychology & the Behavioral Sciences, Kobe, Japan. www.youtube.com.
Raschle, Tshomba, Menks, Fehlbaum, & Stadler. (2016, September 12). “Emotions and the Brain – Or How to Master “The Force.”” Frontiers for Young Minds. www.frontiersforyoungminds.com.
Trends in Cognitive Science, Kringelbach, Kringelbach, Mortel., et al. (2016, July). On Cuteness: Unlocking the Parental Brain and Beyond (No. P545-558). www.universityofoxford.com.