Look at this baby.
How does it make you feel?
Many people probably feel the urge to cuddle it and swaddle it with love.
What about these kittens and puppies?
Or even fictional characters, like Mickey Mouse and Star Wars’ BB-8?
We can all agree that they’re extremely cute, but why?
What makes a baby cute and why do we react to cuteness in the way we do?
In the 1940s, the historically questionable Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz set out
to expose the mystery of cuteness.
He looked at babies from all over the animal kingdom and came to a conclusion—the Kindchenschema
or “baby scheme”.
According to Lorenz, there are a set of features that our brains read as CUTE!
a large, rounded head, a big forehead, large eyes, chubby cheeks, a rounded body, and soft,
elastic skin Evolutionary biologists working on Lorenz’s
‘baby schema’ thought that these “cute” traits and our response to seeing cute babies
might have an evolutionary purpose.
To see whether the ‘baby schema’ was really necessary to make something cute, in 2009,
a group of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania showed 122 undergraduates pictures
of babies and asked them to rate the cuteness of the babies and how motivated they would
be to care for the baby.
The researchers manipulated the baby faces so that some followed the ‘baby schema’
more closely than others.
They found that those baby’s faces that MATCHED the schema were rated cuter than those
who didn’t.
Furthermore, the subjects were more inclined to care for infants that were rated cuter.
Our need to care for our cute infants gives them a better chance of surviving to a reproducible
age.
Without adults caring for infants, especially in those animal species whose infants take
longer to become self-sufficient, like human infants, the survival chances of the species
would be bleak.
Hence, this cuteness hardwiring helps us overlook the baby poop, crying and sleep deprivation
to nurture our young.
Our brains are a testament to this evolutionary link.
Neuroimaging studies have found that we respond to cuteness at lightning speed.
This ‘fast response’ occurs one-seventh of a second or 140ms after we’ve been exposed
to the source of cuteness.
One brain region, in particular, lights up under such conditions—the orbitofrontal
cortex.
This region, located in the prefrontal cortex right above and behind the eye sockets, is
linked to emotions, reward and pleasure.
This might explain why babies seem to grab our attention and never let go.
In fact, sometimes we can find something so cute that it could make us a tad bit aggressive.
This is what scientists from Yale University proposed in their 2015 paper, calling the
phenomenon ‘cute aggression’.
It’s the feeling when you see something so cute that your immediate response is to
squish it.
Researchers think this aggression is a way of controlling the overwhelming flood of positive
emotions that arise from the activation of neural circuits involved in emotions and reward.
Because of this slight aggression, the caretaker can actually take care of the baby, rather
than be incapacitated by their cuteness.
After this fast response, a whole gamut of slower processes are activated that lead to
caretaking and bonding.
These behaviors are characteristics of parenting; in fact, some research suggests that caring
for a child long term can actually change one’s brain to be more equipped to care
for the child, while also making them more empathetic and sensitive to other’s emotions.
However, this isn’t only for parents or cute babies.
Interacting with cute things might also help us concentrate, boost our empathy and compassion,
and make us better people.
All of this indicates that responding to cuteness is an innate behavior.
However, it is difficult to ascertain how these traits evolved, to what extent they
are indeed innate, and how much the environment and culture affect our responses to cuteness.
Scientists often use genetics and epigenetics to identify genes that might be linked to
developing cute features in babies, but so far, the precise evolution of cuteness remains
elusive!