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.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday January 02 2019, @05:16AM (2 children)
I've only ever seen it capitalized, probably because in my part of the US it's used only to refer to the Coca-Cola line of sodas. I know that some parts of the country (IIRC the South & East Coast?) use it as a generic term for sodas in general, so it'd make sense if it's not capitalized in those areas.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 02 2019, @06:44AM
(Score: 2) by termigator on Wednesday January 02 2019, @04:41PM
Whoosh!