Sweet Aggression Why we almost want to crush something when it's too cute

Why we literally go crazy with animal and human babies

Hardly anything is more common and popular on the Internet, than pictures and videos of dog and cat babies. Some people experience a veritable "cuteness attack" when they see them, where they feel a strong urge to hug, push or even bite the baby animal without the desire to do any harm. Where does this widespread urge come from? Psychologists have recently investigated this phenomenon of cuteness aggression in a study.

Many people know it: At the sight of a cute baby animal you would like to pack it and push as hard as it gets. Even in human babies and children arises in many people this urge. A research team led by psychologist Katherine Stavropoulos from the University of California-Riverside researched this common pattern of behavior to better understand the weird form of aggression. The study results have recently been published in the journal "Frontiers in Behavioral Nueroscience".

Are we helplessly at the mercy of cuteness??

Research leader Stavropoulos devoted herself to the subject after reading an investigation into this type of aggression. In 2015, a team of psychologists from Yale University reported the phenomenon. The Yale researchers first noted that respondents were more likely to respond to baby animals than to adult animals. Stavropoulos wanted to deepen the findings in this area. "When people say that they feel the urge to squeeze or even bite living beings they find cute, that would have to be reflected as an activity pattern in the brain," the psychologist said in a press release on the study's findings.

What happens in the brain when we see babies

For research purposes, the participants in the study agreed to view 32 photos from the categories of all kinds of human, baby and adult animals while their brain activity was being measured. After that, they had to complete a questionnaire on how they felt when they saw the pictures. "There was a particularly strong correlation between self-rated cuteness aggression versus cute baby animals and the recorded reward response in the brain," says Stavropoulos. This confirms the thesis that the reward system is involved in this form of aggression.

People with children find sweeter babies

The results also showed that the reaction was much more severe in the baby animals than in the adult animals. In human babies were not consistently the same patterns. "I think if you have a child and look at pictures of cute babies, you may show more sweet aggression and stronger neural responses than people who do not have children," the psychologist suggests.

Where does this feeling come from??

According to the researchers, the study provides the first neural evidence for the significant feelings of cuteness aggression. Why we feel such emotions, remains first theory. Stavropoulos sees this process as an evolutionary means of ensuring that humans are able to take care of creatures that they consider particularly cute. "If we find something as overwhelmingly sweet, we tend to worry about it," the psychologist sums up. (Vb)