“Cute to bite”: this adage is probably familiar to you and for good reason; this feeling is shared by many adults when they see a baby. But how to explain it? Science has the ready-made explanation: the phenomenon of “cute aggression”.
A baby provokes a whole set of emotions in parents, and in adults more generally. It has surely happened to you: at the mere sight of a baby, you felt inevitably overwhelmed by a wave of diverse and varied emotions. There is tenderness, joy, but also… aggressiveness. The toddler is so cute that we have desire to crunch it, bite it, pinch it, squeeze it, or even crush it (in some special cases). Of course, there is no intention to hurt him! It is precisely this phenomenon that is called “cute aggression” Or “cute aggression”. Coming suddenly and abundantly like uncontrollable urges, the emotions provoked by the cute’s aggression are contradictory and paradoxical.
Well known to scientists and psychologists – some of whom have made it their subject of study* – “cute aggression” thus occurs when we see something very cute (or “core” to speak colloquially) . A little kitten making sweet eyes, a little puppy playing with a ball, a slightly chubby baby, are all examples of adorable situations that can arouse cute aggression in us. And the explanation is to be found on the side of our brain…
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Cute aggression: protection mechanism against the overflow of emotion
The cute aggression causes an overflow of emotions in the concerned adult. This “emotional escalation” overwhelms him to the point thathe can’t really handle them anymore. Numerous, these emotions are opposed and expressed in a contradictory way: when we are so happy that we are going to cry, when we are so stressed that we are going to laugh… In the case of cute aggression, we go like this show aggression in the face of something that, in reality, softens us.
These emotions with contradictory expression have a specific name: they are “dimorphous emotions”. According to our colleagues from Brain and Psycho*, their goal is to regulate overwhelming emotions to prevent them from paralyzing us and making us “counterproductive”. In this sense, Rebecca Dyer, researcher in psychology at theyale university**, specifies that the negative emotion expressed externally serves to balance the overflow of emotions felt inside. “Maybe the way we process high positive emotions is to sort of tone them down negatively (…) That kind of regulation, keeps us level and releases that energy”she explains in her study.
Thanks to this emotional regulation allowed by the process of dimorphic emotion, the human being remain able to act in his soul and conscience, without letting himself be carried away by his emotions and his impulses. The goal is not to make him totally lose his means (and his reason) in the face of a situation that requires a minimum of attention. Rather than standing there shocked by so much cuteness, the dimorphic emotion empowers us to best care for the toddler; whether it is a banal situation or a situation that presents a danger.
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Why aggressiveness in the face of cuteness?
Neuroscientists, psychologists and other specialist researchers on the subject cannot say with certainty why the emotion expressed in the face of a crisp thing is necessarily aggression. But a few assumptions have been made about this.
According to them, it is potentially our protective instinct who hides behind this surprising “desire for aggression”. Psychologist Rebecca Dyer explains that just seeing this adorable creature immediately awakens in us the desire to take care of it and protect it. However, we cannot do it as much as we would like, which would frustrate us and result in aggressiveness. At the same time, some say that the desire not to hurt the cute little creature is so strong that we end up doing it…
Open-minded and in love with life, Emilie likes to decipher the new phenomena that shape society and relationships today. Her passion for the human being motivates her to write…