Reference: Stavropoulos, K. K. M., & Alba, L. A. (2018). “It’s so Cute I Could Crush It!”: Understanding Neural Mechanisms of Cute Aggression. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 12, 300.
As I sit down to write, my tuxedo cat Clara has positioned herself staring up at me with hopeful eyes on the off chance I feel like giving her some chicken. It’s a method she uses every time I try to work, but one that never fails to make me clench my teeth out of sheer cuteness overload. It seems I’m not the only one: this curious phenomenon, known as “cuteness aggression,” has intrigued researchers for years, and sheds some light on the complex interplay between emotions and evolutionary biology.
The role of cuteness
For animals, as for humans, being cute has clear evolutionary benefits. Back in the 1940s Konrad Lorenz first defined a ‘baby schema’, to show how infantile features (a large forehead, big eyes, a small nose and chin, and chubby cheeks) elicit caregiving motivation in adults (1), and even boost people’s perception of the cute subject’s ability to socially integrate (2). By manipulating images to exaggerate these features, researchers have since found that the cuter the subject, the greater the increase in caregiving motivation (3).
Why should cuteness encourage feelings of aggression? The sensation itself isn’t new – it is long behind that eternal phrase cooed by excitable relatives at their young relations: “You’re so cute I could just eat you up!” Cuteness aggression has recently entered wider parlance, though, thanks to TikTok videos celebrating the phenomenon of wanting to bite and squeeze adorable pets.
The widely accepted cause for this bizarre conflict of feelings has been termed dimorphous expression of emotion (4), where a very strongly felt emotion might simultaneously produce the seemingly opposite one – think crying tears of joy, or shouting with happiness.
How dimorphous expression works
Aragón, one of the key investigators of the phenomenon, suggests we might experience this emotional contradiction as an evolutionary mechanism to prevent us from feeling overwhelmed by a particularly striking emotion. In the case of cuteness, it would be detrimental to the caregiving cuteness aims to elicit if the caregiver was debilitated by emotion, so a powerful surge of an opposing emotion might help balance this out.
This study took the first comprehensive look at the neural mechanisms underpinning the theory of dimorphous expression of emotion to see what might be driving the response. They hooked 54 adults between 18 and 40 years old to an electroencephalogram (EEG), which records electrical activity from the surface of the scalp. EEG is a commonly used measure because the procedure is non-invasive (participants just have to wear a cap), and provides a to-the-millisecond overview of neuronal activity.
The researchers were mainly looking for any changes in the core modulator RewP. This is a component of the EEG that is stimulated by positive feedback (6). The researchers used it to predict individual variance in participants’ sensitivity to behavioral and self-report measures.
How they measured it
Before the EEG, participants completed self-report questionnaires about their susceptibility to dimorphous expressions of emotions. They rated their agreement with statements like, “‘I cry while watching the happiest of moments of movies,” or “When I am feeling strong positive emotions, I express them with negative expressions.” After the questionnaire, researchers set up the EEG and showed participants groups of cute stimuli in blocks. The groups contained images of animals that the researchers had manipulated to make them cuter looking (i.e., by giving the animals larger eyes and chubbier cheeks), and then the same ones similarly amended but to look less cute (i.e., by reducing the animals’ eye size and narrowing their cheeks). They did the same for the two sets of baby photos, using the same set of baby photos adapted to be more and less visually appealing. After each round, participants were asked to rate how they felt about the category they had just seen.
Neuronal responses to cute aggression
The researchers found a positive correlation between reported sensitivity to cuteness aggression and the strength of the RewP reward measure. That is, people who reported they felt, or had even acted, on a feeling of wanting to behave aggressively towards something cute had a stronger neuronal response to seeing the cute animal images. Also, the correlation was stronger for participants who reported they had enacted an “aggressive” behavior driven by cuteness in the past compared to people who had only thought about it.
Interestingly, people responded less intensely to the images of human infants, regardless of their self-rating of a tendency to experience dimorphous expressions of emotions. One possible explanation for this finding is that participants were shown the baby photos back-to-back, and so were maybe slightly immune to seeing the only slightly different images of the same baby, reducing its cuteness impact.
These findings provide one of the first demonstrations of the neuronal mechanisms that might be driving cuteness aggression, and that susceptibility to the phenomenon varies among people. However, questions remain about why cuteness aggression occurs. For example, perhaps feelings of aggression are motivated by protectiveness over vulnerable young. Future research could investigate this idea by looking at different age groups and seeing when cuteness aggression begins or peaks during development. Studying dimorphous expressions of emotions in groups suffering from emotional affective disorders (like depression or postpartum parents) could also shed light on the phenomenon.
Nonetheless, at least next time you find yourself crying during a heartwarming film or fighting an overwhelming desire to squeeze your pet’s little paws, you can safely rest assured it’s just evolution working its magic to make you the best care provider possible!
Images : (1) Cheetah Cubs. Accessed 26.02.24. Link
(2) EEG scan. Accessed 04.07.24. Link
Additional References:
(1) Glocker, M. L., Langleben, D. D., Ruparel, K., Loughead, J. W., Gur, R. C., & Sachser, N. (2009). Baby Schema in Infant Faces Induces Cuteness Perception and Motivation for Caretaking in Adults. Ethology : formerly Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie, 115(3), 257–263. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0310.2008.01603.x
(2) Sherman G. D., Haidt J. (2011). Cuteness and disgust: the humanizing and dehumanizing effects of emotion. Emot. Rev. 3, 245–251. 10.1177/1754073911402396
(3) Hildebrandt, K. A, Fitzgerald, H. E. (1978). Adults’ responses to infants varying in perceived cuteness. Behavioural Processes, 3, 159–172.
(4) Aragón, O. R., Clark, M. S., Dyer, R. L., & Bargh, J. A. (2015). Dimorphous expressions of positive emotion: Displays of both care and aggression in response to cute stimuli. Psychological Science, 26(3), 259–273. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614561044
(6) Baker, T. E., Holroyd, C. B. (2011). Dissociated roles of the anterior cingulate cortex in reward and conflict processing as revealed by the feedback error-related negativity and N200. Biol. Psychology, 87. 25–34. 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.01.010
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