It’s a "go-get-it" attitude,” Nittono says, and such feelings can switch easily between positive and negative. (You now have Nittono and colleagues to thank for your scientifically justified “cute animals breaks” at work.) That's because cuteness creates a positive feeling associated with a strong “ approach motivation,” which is an action triggered by a desire for a good outcome, says study leader Hiroshi Nittono, director of the Cognitive Psychophysiology Laboratory at Japan's Hiroshima University. Looking at cute images also makes us more attentive to detail, according to a 2012 study in the journal PLOS ONE. Photograph by Roy Toft, Nat Geo Image Collection Cute Overload “Because they may help people to regain control over their intense emotions, these expressions help the caretaker to appropriately,” Aragon says.Ī white labrador puppy running in Ramona, California. (See " Unbelievably Cute Mammal With Teddy Bear Face Rediscovered.") That secondary reaction may also serve to “scramble” and temper their initial overwhelming emotion, thus bringing the person into balance.įor instance, the 2015 study showed people who had such positive and negative concurrent reactions regained their emotional equilibrium more quickly.Īnd if you’re caring for something adorable, that’s important. "So you have tears of joy, nervous laughter, or wanting to squeeze something that you think is unbearably cute"-even if it's an animal you'd normally want to cuddle or protect. ( Here's the science behind why we find some animals so cute.) So what explains our impulse to squeeze or nibble adorable animals?įor some people, experiencing a strong emotion is followed by “an expression of what one would think is an opposing feeling," says Aragon. This shows that, if given the chance to squeeze something while seeing the pictures, they would-though Aragon stresses, not with any real intent to harm the creatures. Speaking of pinching, another experiment in the recent study found that participants popped more bubble wrap when they saw images of cute baby animals than those who viewed images of older animals. In a 2015 study in Psychological Science, Yale University psychologist Oriana Aragon and team found that people who have extremely positive reactions to images of cute babies also “displayed stronger aggressive expressions,” such as wanting to pinch the babies' cheeks. “Seems dangerous, evolutionarily speaking!” “Why, when something is adorable, do we get the urge to squeeze it and squish it?” National Geographic's own Emily Tye asked Saturday’s Weird Animal Question of the Week. The first step is admitting you have a problem.
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