The Science of “Cuteness” 👶🏻

Morning cuties!

Why are things… cute?

Things like:

Puppies:

Kittens:

Babies:

They just make you wanna squidge em right?

What is that feeling?

What exactly IS “cuteness?”

For that, we gotta figure out EXACTLY what makes something “cute”.

Luckily we don’t have to.

Some guy already did it in 1943.

What did he do?

Well, first he found a bunch of images of animals.

Some cute, some not so cute.

Then he would show these images to people in order to figure out what KEY features people find cute.

And what he found was VERY interesting…

He found that people would always select the features linked with the baby form of that animal!

Things like:

Plump cheeks:

Large eyes:

Short limbs:

Basically, for humans, cuteness is anything that makes them look “baby like”.

The scientist dude found that when study participants see images containing MORE features associated with babies, they would actually tend to look at them longer and more often…

As well as this, the photos also appeared to stimulate regions of the brain linked with emotion and reward!

Humans are literally hard-wired to find things cute!

But WHY?

Why do we love cute things SOOOOO much?

Well, the theory goes something like this:

Cute things make us want to care for them.

Huh?

Think about it, human babies on their own are… pretty helpless.

If they are left for more than 5 minutes they WILL find a way to kill themselves.

Therefore evolution has made sure that we find these things cute so we actually want to care for them.

I mean… ALL those features linked to cuteness are ALSO found in human babies too!

So really, when you see something cute its your brain saying:

Lol, thanks evolution!

Stay Cute,
Reece, Henry & Dylan 🌈

If you’re that sexy friend, subscribe here.