Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by n1 on Tuesday January 01 2019, @03:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the death-to-the-adorable dept.

Submitted via IRC for takyon

When Too Cute Is Too Much, The Brain Can Get Aggressive

The holiday season is all about cute. You've got those ads with adorable children and those movies about baby animals with big eyes.

But when people encounter too much cuteness, the result can be something scientists call "cute aggression."

People "just have this flash of thinking: 'I want to crush it' or 'I want to squeeze it until pops' or 'I want to punch it,' " says Katherine Stavropoulos, a psychologist in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside.

About half of all adults have those thoughts sometimes, says Stavropoulos, who published a study about the phenomenon in early December in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. But those people wouldn't really take a swipe at Bambi or Thumper, she says.

"When people feel this way, it's with no desire to cause harm," Stavropoulos says. The thoughts appear to be an involuntary response to being overwhelmed by a positive emotion.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 01 2019, @07:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 01 2019, @07:37PM (#780680)

    But I am generally afflicted by revulsion when I'm around too much of that stuff. I always thought this was just something I've been culturally conditioned to feel as a man.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1