The urge people get to squeeze, crush, pinch, or bite cute living things (e.g. babies and baby animals), albeit without desire to cause harm, is known as “cute aggression.”
February 14, 2023
First time I heard the term cute aggression I was watching an episode of the wonderful show / podcast In lieu of fun. The guest of the show was Dr. Katherine K. M. Stavropoulos, principal investigator at the Social Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience Lab at UC Riverside. The discussion on the subject of cute aggression between the hosts, the guest, and the audience was not only interesting, but also very entertaining.
If you want to learn about this paradoxical concept, in a very pleasant informal way, I encourage you to watch that episode here:
If you want to learn about it in a more formal way, I recommend reading the paper [1], which is the first study into the neuroscience of cute aggression. The study was conducted by Dr. Stavropoulos.
The study provides insight into how cute aggression affects brain activity and behavior. The results of the study show that cute aggression is related to two types of neural mechanisms: that of emotional salience and that of reward processing. More precisely, cute aggression appears to be a complex and multi-faceted emotional response that likely serves to mediate strong emotional responses (feeling overwhelmed by positive emotions) and allow caretaking to occur.
References:
- Stavropoulos, Katherine KM, and Laura A. Alba. ““It’s so cute I could crush it!”: Understanding neural mechanisms of cute aggression.” Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience 12 (2018): 300.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00300/full
Thank you for interesting content 👍