The Science of Cute

Published Jan 14, 2021, 10:00 AM

If you took our advice and looked up baby beavers a few episodes back, you probably found them sooooo cute you couldn’t stand it. Or you just wanted to eat them up, which is weird if you think about it. Friend, prepare for the science on that!

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Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. Cute as a button Bryant, and there's Jerry squee rolland and this is stuff you should know of the podcast. A cute addition, that's right, the science a cute. Yeah, I'm excited about this when I've been wanting to do it for a while. I remember, like that was one of the first things you ever said to me when we met in the office, how cute you are? Well? No, we were in the break room and I saw a picture of a baby panda and I just started to melt, and you went, hey, jerk, you ever wonder why you think things are cute? I bet there's science behind that. Maybe we should talk about it one day, and look here we are. What was that, well thirteen years ago almost man, you really responded to that aggression into so chuck. Have you ever heard of Mickey Mouse? Oh? I know several mice, but I've never heard of Mickey Mouse. You've only heard of Modeled Muck and Ricky Rouse. Um, well, let me tell you about Mickey Mouse. He's actually the mascot of a very large entertainment corporation called Disney. Uh. They own Walt Disney World, Walt Disneyland. I think ABC owns them. They're they're affiliated with ESPN. They're very, very big. But they have this mascot. It's a mouse and his name's Mickey. He's he's kind of big, especially abroad. Um. But if you look at Mickey today, you think, wow, that's a really cute mouse. Doesn't really look like a mouse. He's black and white basically are brownish and black. Um. But also his few teachers are very much not mouse like. But if you were to go back and look at the beginning of Mickey, I think he's from the nine twenties, like nineteen twenties. In his earliest cartoons, he looked a lot more mousey like cartoon mouse, but he had, you know, his pointed features, not nearly as cute. But then if you fast forward about ten years later, by the time rolls around and he's in something called The Brave Taylor that was one of his shorts, UM where I think he defeats a giant or something like that. Um, he looks full blown Mickey Mouse, but he looks way cuter and they had done a few things to him. They had like made his eyes bigger, they've made his features rounder less pointed. Um, he had big gloves and big shoes. Now he's kind of plump and oversized features, and he had gotten cute. And the scientist Stephen Jay Gould, who really deserves his own episode like Carl Sagan does, Um, just a really interesting dude. Um. He said that Disney and his animators had stumbled upon something that the zoologists and mythologist Conrad Lawrence UM termed can can schema. I think I got that right right. Uh yeah, can can schema very nice. Um. But like years before Conrad Lawrence ever did that, they had just kind of naturally figured out like, oh, this can be way more appealing if we if we exaggerate these particular features. And it turns out what they had done is make him literally cut by the very scientific definition of cuteness. Yeah. So Lawrence was an Austrian scientist and in the forties came up with this. And this made me feel quite good about myself actually looking over this list about physical qualities that um, and it's not just a person came me an animal. As we'll see a lot of this is animal based. But these things, these traits that would evoke a positive response, a very strong positive response, and they are large head. M that's me, um, high protruding forehead. I've always said you have a five head. If any, it's it's average, large eyes, sort of average, chubby cheeks bingo. Oh, you should make the cheeks make a sonic appearance. Very nice. It's been years, still as moist as ever. Sorry, everyone. Uh, chubby cheeks, small nose, I'm an average nose, small mouth, and chin I'd say average short, thick extremities, actually have sort of skinny legs. I'll carry my weight between my chin and my belt. Plump body shape. Bingo. So I am scientifically half cute. You are very cute. I mean that's definitely. It's not even up for debate. Really, I used to get called cute by the ladies. Not handsome, but cute. There's definitely I saw that. Um. Paul McCartney hated being known as the cute beetle, probably for the same you know, the same differences that you just mentioned, probably, but the the like what you just said, this list you just you just um you rattled off. That is Lawrence's kinkin schema or baby schema or baby nous, which is basically like, if you put all these things together, you have what amounts to what we humans consider cute, and you can extrapolate, like you were saying, not just onto babies, but onto other animals and even onto like cartoon characters. Yeah, you either have these things and you're regarded as cute, or you don't and you're not exactly. Yeah, that's a really good point that you can you can not only have this, you can also lack it, and that that has that modulates our response to whatever that thing is. Yeah, and it's also important to point out that this is these are guidelines, scientific sort of guidelines and truisms, but not across the board like some people. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and cuteness is sure, So some people might look at a baby, I don't know, just some sort of weird reptilian thing that has none of these traits and think it's super cute as well. Right, Yeah, yeah, it is kind of subjective, but there does seem to be um if not universal or widely tapped into sense of what's cute and what's not. You know what, I mean, yeah, still, let me rephrase that the person that thinks the baby lizard that has none of these traits is cute, they probably also think the panda is cute, right, you know what I'm saying, Right, Yeah, they're probably not disgusted or just totally turn off that dirty, ugly baby kitten. And so so Lawrence was um. He compiled this list based on his observations, and I guess from what I read, like this whole study of cuteness is pretty young as far as scientific investigation goes, So you know that we're still figuring it out. It's still developing as it goes along. Some of the study is involved or fairly suspect, but there seems to be this this kind of general acceptance of Lawrenz's k Kinkin schema, which is that it was just it's so it's so obviously correct that from what I read, some people just haven't even investigated, which is good and bad. Um. Lawrence was a behaviorist and he actually we met him first in our animal imprinting episode, which was a really good one, but he studied that, um. But he put this all together to study behaviors, and what he was studying is exactly how babies UM get adult humans who may not even be their parents to respond to them in a way that um, that adult wants to take care of that baby. And what he what he came up with was this kinkin schema cuteness. Uh. What he said unlocks um innate instincts in humans that basically triggers like automatic behaviors like oh, I want to make sure that you stay alive, so I'm going to go find you some food that kind of stuff. Yeah, And it corresponds to helplessness at birth. There's a direct correlation between um, how cute you look and how how little you can get buy in your own In the animal kingdom, um, most mammals are born very small, very helpless. Uh many months sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years of care before they can go off and kind of do their own thing. That's called altricial. What to take to being born helpless? You're altricial. Yeah, so if you're altricial, you're probably almost more cute than an animal that is born that can kind of run right out and do things on their own, probably not as cute. That's precociale altricial and precocial, right, and and the thing is is like, if you step back, like it's just so easy to just overlook this, and if you really start to think about this, cuteness has been this adaptive, I guess, evolutionary trait that's just been hiding and plain sight until Lawrence really put his finger on it. But if you step back and think about it, there's no there's no innate or there's no reason that a baby has in and of itself to evoke a response and a human even its parents, um to want to take care of it, but it needs that because it is an altricial species. Humans are an altricial species. They'll they'll just die out if you don't take care of a baby, and if enough babies die out, eventually humanity dies out, the species dies out. So it's an adaptation to make somebody want to take care of you. And that is what Lawrence figured out. That cuteness is that trigger that we find babies cute and it makes us want to take care of them. And that is one of the most mind blowing things I know. Yeah, I mean if you look at human babies. Human babies are born pretty early in their development, like if um all things being equal. Human babies should probably be born six months later than they are, but they're not. Human babies come out very early. They come out before their little fontanelles are even formed, and they need a lot of care and uh, they're they're born that Like, human babies are small so they can fit out of the birth canal. Their little noses are cartilage so they don't get broken on the way out. Like you know, babies should have larger heads and should have like that should but you know what I'm saying, fully formed like strong noses, but they wouldn't be able to to come out of a lady if that was the case. Yeah, because our brains are have have developed to be so big, and our craniums have developed in in response to that that like we're evolutionarily speaking or developmentally speaking, we're underdeveloped when we're born, even though we're we would have been born at like a normal normal gestation period for a human compared to other species. It's like you're, this kid's out a little. This kid hasn't baked fully, you know what I'm saying. And so that really makes human babies even among you know, other mammals that are altricial super dependent on caregivers to make sure that it survives. Yeah. So, like a human baby's head is really large compared to their body. Um, and these are you know, these are some of the cuteness traits that we mentioned early. On their eyes. You know, your eyes don't really grow. Your eyes are about the same size. I didn't know that, did you. Yeah, that's why when you look at some babies and you're like, look how huge their eyes are, it's just because they're on a little tiny face. It makes sense, But I just had never known that you're born basically the size that they're going to be when you grow up. I think if you really work them out, they can beef up a little bit. Though. We mentioned those tiny little noses super cute and very bendy. Um, they're little baby cheeks and everything soft so you can get out of that birth canal. And you know, formula and mother's milk keep you kind of chunky and full. Um. You know, nobody's gonna put a baby on a diet, no good lord, no. Um. The skin is very loosed and soft. H. So you know, if you go through a big gross spurt, it doesn't you know, split open sounds gross. Uh, and then you know the way babies move, it's just just very cute there. Babies are awkward and they're clumsy, and um, they don't like have the definition to like manipulate these these muscle groups very well. Yet Yeah, and it's awkward and gawky and super cute. All of this stuff together is cute to us. And it raises the question, like, did babies evolved human babies evolved to fit our definition of cute or did our definition Actually I've seen both. I've seen both. So it makes sense that like our definition of what's cute and what we respond to is cute would be based on the average human baby. But you can also take an average human baby and tweak, like digitally, um, a picture of a baby and tweak it to maximum cuteness. And so there's this other idea that Okay, maybe originally our idea of cuteness was based on baby features, But the cutest babies would um logically get the most response and would be the most the most likely yeah, and would be the most likely to survive and thrive and go on to reproduce. So it is entirely possible that we have a speed as a species have gotten cuter over the over the eons because of selection of the for the cutest babies. Well, and that's been critical to our serve bible. Um. You know it's uh when you see something like that, when you see a baby chick, you your instinct is to pick it up and cradle it and make sure you know that a tree branch doesn't fall on it, right, And that's the same goes for babies. Yeah, because they share a lot of the same similarities, the same kin kin kin schema. I wish that ken wasn't in there. I wish it was just kin den schema. Call it that. Then. I don't want to get things wrong all the time, and we do. We do. It's usually not purposefully, you know, Okay, But um, that same set of traits can apply to other animals. It was like you were saying, you know, animals that fall into that set of traits appear cute to us, and we want to save them, we want to take care of them. Um. Like a little baby giraffe has huge eyes, its features are kind of small compared to a larger adult draft which even adult drafts are awfully cute. But one of the things that a baby draft is going to get you with is hobbling around trying to stand up that first time I hit you with those little shaky legs look out. Yeah, and that reminds us or reminds some very ancient part of our brain of human infant, you know, like developing its motor skill. So it seems like it's not like our brains are confused, like you're not looking at a baby giraffe, like, look at that baby human. I love it. It's just it triggers the same part of the brain that seeing a human infant does, um, because of that same set of characteristics. Yeah, Like, there was a study I found on mental flaws from two thousand nine where scientists reported that, uh, people in the study that viewed really cute images of puppies and kittens performed better in the game of Operation you know, the kids game than people who saw less like that saw pictures of grown up dogs and cats. So it just innately triggers this care response. It's really really interesting. Yeah. And so what Lorenz called that innate releasers, that that you see a cute baby and the cuteness acts as an innate releaser, which triggers a set of inborn instincts in every human to take care of that baby, and that one apparently hasn't necessarily borne out. But there is a lot of or there's an increasing amount of documentation about how seeing something cute affects the brain. And I propose that we take a commercial break and then come back and talk about that afterwards. We'll be right back. I think I has a commercial break. Sure, I now it's in the in the survey, it's like an after school special all of a sudden, so um, I think before we dive into what you're talking about, I do want to mention the wolf puppy thing. I thought it was pretty interesting, is that there is an example of a co evolved trait with the human brain that triggers that cuteness response when you look at wolves wild wolves apparently, and these were predogs. Basically, Um, they don't have this muscle called the uh. Here we go with some Latin. I guess uh leabator angouli oculi. Mettie Alice just made a demon appere Oh my god, Um, this muscle they don't have in their eyebrows, and apparently that is the muscle that can make what we think of as puppy dog eyes. Dogs that came later did of all that muscle, and then we're bred for it because it made people melt inside. Uh so that's why wolves, which is interesting, like wolves have that sort of scowl and they can't help it. But then I looked at wolf puppy pictures and it's pretty cute. But maybe it's not in the eyes. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what it is either, but that I think that raises a really good question that also kind of points out it like this, this research is still very young, and there's contradictory information coming in and a lot of it is just based on intuition and that kind of thing. But there are, like you said, there's that there are people walking around who think, like that baby lizard is super cute. You know what I'm saying, Like it it's not entirely universal, and you know, maybe those wolf puppies have some other traits that have nothing to do with the eyes that that are hijacking your brain. The point that stands out to me is that that that caregiving instinct that Lorenz pointed out, or whatever whatever weird brain pathway we have, um, that's triggered by seeing something cute, is that it extends beyond humans. And I think that that kind of that that makes humanity as a species like that much greater in my opinion, that like that caregiving impulse can extend beyond humans. And I mean that explains pets right there. Like, I don't think we would have pets if that wasn't true, you know, I mean, we'd have like guard dogs or something still, but you know, not a pet. There would be German shepherds. There'd be nothing but and they'd all be mean as as snakes. And we probably have snakes too. That rode the German shepherds. They still wouldn't be pets. Baby snakes not so cute. There's also that weird thing where something is so ugly it's cute as a young thing. Okay, so that's a Japanese term. We'll talk about kawaie later. But there's something called chemo kawaii, which is called gross cute. Interesting. Yeah, they they've they've got it. That's something they're like the Germans, but further east, they have like a name and a term in idea for everything. You know. All right, we'll put a pin in that because we did promise the science of cute. So we're gonna have to look at um, we're gonna have to look at the brain and actually what's going on there. And they've done that of course. UM. They've put people in the Wonder machine and they have shown people pictures of baby faces to see what lights up. And when that happens, you get a really strong immediate response and what's called the orbitofrontal cortex, which is where we regulate our emotions and our pleasure, and it's a really really fast response, um one seven of a second. Um. It doesn't take long when you see that baby or that puppy or whatever you don't it doesn't take you long to to immediately think, I need to care for that thing and hold that thing. Yeah, Because so that orbitofrontal cortex UM apparently has something to do with the reward system. So your attention is captured very quickly and you get a little burst of of pleasure from seeing that that cute baby. And then there's another thing too that that that came out of that two thousand nine study using operation that all of a sudden, you're attention is very much focused and you can complete tasks um much better or at least remarkably better. Um, then you could without seeing something cute. So it really does suggest we have this inborn pathway to respond to something cute in a pleasurable way with warm feelings. Um, that trigger an ability a greater or more focused ability to do something like, for example, care for or feed a baby or that kind of thing that's that seems to be borne out like Lawrence's innate release, or seems to be being discovered um by neurology right now. Which is interesting though, because caring for a baby is not, in my experience, something you need that kind of focus for. It's not like putting together a little model house with tiny pieces of furniture. Um, it's just like keep this thing alive. Right, But maybe maybe that's like, um, rather than being like, oh you know, I think i'll I'd rather break the law of the law and instead and you just stop feeding the baby leaves you know what I'm saying, Like your your attention to the task at hand. He's a little more focused, so you're less distracted. Yeah, that's what kind of focus. Sure. Yeah, Luckily it doesn't take much brains because it's a lot of non smart parents out there. That is true. Um So in that response, that speedy response in the orbitofrontal cortex when you see that baby, men and women both have that same spike. But I think women report stronger caregiving, which they chalk up to just gender roles basically and not necessarily anything to do with the brain itself. Yeah, because the same areas light up for men and women, I guess to the same degree. It's just self reported as different, right right. And then apparently also like this, this is not just um parents who experienced this, like a human being will or a typical human being will experience this. Yeah, I mean that's the thing where like, as an adoptive parent, you know this is uh, my daughter is not my seed. Um, but I can't piplical it. Um but I can't like I have nothing to base it on. But I can't imagine a stronger connection or a stronger instinct to care give and um so it's a It's an important trait clearly because like you've seen movies where uh, people find like a baby like abandoned by the dumpster and that you know, you run out and you know, I suppose some people might just say call it in and say Hey, there's a baby over here. I'm not going near it, but a humans inclination is to run over and pick that baby up and wrap it up in something warm and then maybe call the cops or whatever. Right, and like you said, like run over there like that, like it an urgent thing that that your brain would just be like get over there, right, the helpless thing out there by a dumpster, let's go get it. Yeah. Um, that apparently would come probably more from um the baby's cry, which I guess also a nights like the same kind of um pathway as cuteness does, but it's a different it's slightly different. There's not necessarily a reward. It's more like urgency. And they call that a biological siren, which which would you know, get you over there really quickly, But it's not necessarily because you saw you know, you you thought about how cute the baby is in those swaddling clothes. Right. Uh. Sound is definitely important. Like that same study, if you hear babies laughter or even as the smell of a baby, you your brain lights up in the same way. Yeah. So like that, we're presented with the entire cute package of everything that's great about babies, sounds, smell. They are really deeply manipulative. I think is is what you're meant to take away from this episode. They are just tiny little monsters saying like, take care of me for eighteen years. That's right, and possibly beyond. If I'm gen X exactly, it was a gen X or millennials. I don't know. I feel like there were plenty of gen xers that lived in the Bay, right, you're totally right, or maybe that's every generation, but we weren't coddled as much. Oh boy, you're gonna get us canceled the boy. Uh yeah, So let's move on from that. Oh wait, here's another thing. And this is the satisfinding Ever, when they did the study, um that that brain activity was diminished when they were shown baby faces that were had some sort of facial disruption, like a cleft palate. And that is really one of the saddest things you can imagine hearing. Yeah, because I mean that would that would account for you know what I was talking about earlier about how cuteness is selected for that there's this like by no one's fault of their own, but just through you know, the evolutionary process of these these neural connections that were born that are ready to make like wanting to respond to something cute. If you're presented with something that doesn't quite line up with that king Kin schema, Um, that baby is going to have a much harder time getting that same response from from somebody than just a traditionally cute baby. Well, it's it's extraordinarily sad. I think we need to do an episode on cleft palates too. That that stood out to me that we haven't done that yet. Yeah, or even worse than you know, in ancient times, those babies would be walked out to the woods and left, you know, yeah, for sure, you know. Um, Carl Lawrence apparently said that the Quby doll, you know, our cup mayonnaise, So the doll that that's based on if you take a look at its face, Um, that in Lawrence's opinion, that was the maximum exaggeration that you could reach of Kinkin schema before violating it, and that afterward what was beyond it was that wasn't coined at the time, but what he was talking about was basically an uncanny valley like there's your brain would start to be like, wait, there's something, so thing is somewhat out of order here. UM, So it's weird. There's like a really apparently there's a set a package of traits that make up what is considered cute, and straying outside of that, UM just kind of violates it in some weird way. It violates like this this pathway that we're we seem to be pre programmed to have. I didn't know mayonnaise was going to make an appearance. I I did because I saw the cuteie thing, But before that I had no idea either. So cuteness is going to activate other parts of the brain. It's just not that superspeedy response that you get in the orbitofrontal cortex. UM. So if you're a parent and you have a brain, UM, you're gonna go undergo a really kind of slow change. UM. As you parent and as you take care of that baby, in bond with that baby, as they go into infancy. UM, you're gonna still have that trigger of cuteness, but it's just going to be a slower response and more complex as far as your actual brain activity goes. Yeah, and supposedly that co evolves with the cuteness of a baby, like a newborn baby is just that. But like you look at a baby some six months that same baby, Yeah, you have to admit, it's pretty infrequent for a baby to be cute right out of the womb. Yeah, I mean generally they're little alien lizard type creatures. Sure, but wait six months, and that same baby is going to look awfully cute. So and within right, and within that six months, um, you're going to have developed more sophisticated responses, caretaking responses to that baby's cuteness. Um, it's pretty interesting that like they both start to gel around the same time, the babies start to hit pique cuteness and the caregiving stuff becomes more and more sophisticated. It goes from I need to keep this baby alive to um, you know what college is this baby? I'm gonna get this baby through college kind of stuff. You start thinking about that, right, and that sort of brings back what we talked about earlier as UM, like that that empathetic, compassionate response when it's not even your child, Yes, when it's not even from the same species. And and like you were saying, you know, people tend to rate um, the species that are most altricial as the cutest because they need the most help. So that pathway can be hijacked by humans, human babies and other species as well, and by people who are trying to sell you stuff. As we'll see. That's very true. Break, Yes, all right, we're gonna take your break and talk about qute aggression, something that we're pretty familiar with right after this. All right, So I've talked before in the past about my wife Emily, and uh, when she sees puppies and babies and other cute little things, she uh, she says stuff like I want to I want to punch that baby in the face. I want to squeeze the life out of it. I want to I want to eat that puppy. Like some things that sound genuinely horrific, Maybe not, I want to punch that baby in the face. That's a different I've seen that somewhere, but it's a thing, and it's not just her, it's an actual thing. It's called cute aggression. When you see something and you say, you know, I want to put that puppy on a plate and eat it, which is, like you said, it's very weird when you step back and think about it, um, and it actually it's of a very recent um investigation, like I think two thirteen is the earliest I saw um. And one of the people who are leading the charge into studying qute aggression is a Clemson psychologist named Oriana aragon Um, and she and some of her colleagues have really kind of are are are establishing this field of cute aggression. And the reason why aragon is a pretty good social psychologist to be investigating this is because her specialty is dimorphous expressions, which is contradictory emotional indicators that don't really seem to go together, but do because it's just so common, like tears of joy um or nervous laughter, that kind of stuff, And it seems that que aggression kind of falls under that same umbrella. Yeah, and it's interesting because you say, sure, great, qute aggression. We've got a name for it that doesn't really explain it though, and it's explained kind of like nervous laughter or tears of joy. It may be a way of regulating something that's just too overwhelming emotionally. So when they study qute aggression, they show people the cutest pictures of the cutest things, see how the brain responds and people who have the really biggest cute aggressive response, UM, their brains are lighting up, but your reward system is also lighting up at the same time, right, but it's like an overwhelming reward response, like you're just uh, it's intolerable. Yeah, And so the idea is that your brain brings you down from that um by implementing like a not complimentary what's the opposite of complimentary m you're a big jerk, that kind of UM, that kind of emotion like anger or aggression or hostility or something like that, to balance it out and to bring you back down. Because it makes sense that if you were just sitting there experiencing overwhelming UM cute overload like you would, you might not ever get around defeating that baby. You might just be sitting there like with your tongue hanging out the side of your mouth, drooling. Yeah. It's interesting because like a lot of times, and I've heard a lot of other people say this, but like Emily will say like I just want to squeeze that baby, and that's followed up with I can't even take it, Like I just can't even take it with this cuteness, Like that's that's literally true, Like your brain can't even take it. So I thought it was cute. Aragon Um came up with a way to measure cute aggression UM by using bubble wrap. This I didn't quite understand this. She would give um bubble wrap two people and show them different pictures, and the pictures that rated the highest in cuteness UM evoked or led to the largest number of bubbles pops. So the idea is like, if you see something cute, pop bubbles or just like here, hold this, and you just find yourself popping them. I don't know. I don't know that. I don't know actually to tell you the truth, UM, I think yeah. I think it's more it's meant to be like an unconscious thing, Like you're not supposed to be like, well, this is an eighty bubble kitty, you know, nothing like that. Or it's just like you look down you're like, oh my god, there's no more bubbles left this that that cat was so cute kind of thing. UM. I saw another explanation for Q diggression in that it's a response to a frustrated desire for caregiving. So where um, where you want to go punch that baby in the face. But you know, you'll spend a significant amount of time in jail if you actually do that, right, Like, that's that's where that would come a from like like that, you can't do that. It's not your baby to go snug goal and cuddle and take care of you can't. You have to do it from a far exactly, So you have to do it from afar. So it it it comes out in this mixture of cute response and aggression or aggressive words or uh you know that kind of thing well, and that also kind of dovetails with the cute sadness, which is I guess Aragon coined that term as well. Is where um, you see a puppy in a window and you go oh, no or ah or make a frowny face. That's when you see a lot when you see something really cute. And her theory is that kind of like what you're just saying, like that puppy is is uh is in the crate at the adoption place and you can't get to it, or it's just walking down the street with somebody and you're driving your car and you can't get to it. So you're expressing a kind of a frustration that you can't get out of the car and squeeze the puppy, right, so you have to squeeze your sphincter instead. But I guess it comes out as disappointment though, yeah, yeah, and it's it would seem to be frustrated, a response to frustrated attempts at caregiving or a frustrated desire to caregive because you see something cute and your caregiving instinct is triggered or whatever you want to call it if you don't don't agree with instinct, but there's nothing you can do about it because you're driving and that things going the other way, so you can't do anything to to take care of it. So you have to get that out somehow. And it seems like anger and aggression is a good way for it to make it subside quickly. But again again I really want to point out here this is this is intuitive stuff. This is not stuff where it's like this study backs the sub and this study backs this up. From what I've seen, every single study in cuteness and cute aggression, uh, involves about a hundred and fifty college undergrads as your your your study population, and they're popping bubble wrap and stuff like that like, it's still very early in its research, but it does make a lot of sense, you know, But that doesn't necessarily mean that's that's accurate. Just take that and take that with a grain of salt whatever that means. And it's also, um, I'm not knocking the study, but it's also you know, let's be honest, it's not the most important thing in the world. No, No, it's like interesting to understand. It makes for good reading on an internet article, but uh, it's not driving Like, it's not solving a problem, you know what I'm saying. I suddenly feel like we're standing in the middle of a vast glass house and we have rocks in our hands right now. Oh boy, I think it's fun to talk about. I mean, that's what makes I mean, this is perfect podcast spodder for sure. Um, But like I'm curious that this could be applied at all. I don't know. I think maybe it's just one of those things where it's like, now we understand that it's documented, it's understood, so we understand humans a little more, and then maybe it'll open some door to some other thing that we realize was connected that. You know that. Yeah, but I totally agree with what you're saying. Yeah, but I think you've pulled me any other direction. Nobel prize, oh good God to send it their way. Good. So you mentioned earlier about using the stuff to sell things, and that is for sure true. Um, you can't. I mean, you look at any Pixar or Disney cartoon or anime. Certainly, Um, you're gonna see round babies and you're gonna see huge eyes. When you see pamphlets that are trying to sell stuff or or try to get you to donate to an animal cause or a children's foundation. Um, they're probably gonna put a baby or a puppy on that cover that has the biggest, roundest face and eyes. It's manipulative, Um, but used for good generally. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's almost like um, using music in the background of an ad, you know, like it's purposefully hijacking a very ancient neural pathway that basically all humans have to get an emotional response out of you, a positive emotional response. And it might have nothing to do with with what they're trying to sell, but you're you're now associating pleasurable, warm feeling with you know, Mr Sparkle dishwashing detergent, you know when really it's just a a joint venture of Matsumura Fish Works and Tomorrow Heavy Manufacturing concern. Um. Like when they've done um, they've done studies and like anti smoking campaigns for teenagers, and they respond more to cartoon characters that are cute, which sounds a lot like Joe Campbell. If you ask me, it's like the opposite. That's true. Um, but it does make sense like a teens might respond to a list here is like a penguin and a jacket or a polar bear. Then you know some adult human like pointing their finger at you like John, can you imagine to the teens don't smoke? Right? So? Um? Yeah, it also makes you think, like you know, since so many like cute toys, or so many toys are cute. Um, when you're buying like a plush animal has, are you responding almost in like an insane way to your cute caregiving response? Just being manipulated and like you're going to take that stuff to animal home and and and give it care because it's just been activated in you? Is that really? Is that? That seems to be what's going on when you when you're when you buy like a toy like that. That's interesting because then if you know, if you see people walking around like that, you're like, oh, well you've you've just been manipulated. Congratulations kind of thing. But also you can make the case to um. And I read a guy uh something by a guy named Gary Jenosco who is the Canada Research Chair and Techno Culture at lake Head University in thunder Bay, Ontario, and he argues that UM that same thing that the commodification of cute, uh say, like by Disney. He also argues that National Geographic Magazine was big into getting people in involved in caring about animals and nature. They really use cuteness, especially in like the fifties and sixties. I guess um that it forms our understanding of things in a very specific way, which is this thing is cute. It's like a toy to me. I want to pick it up and carry it around and love it and hug on it. But in doing that you really miss out on a lot of the um the individual um personality of whatever that animal is. Like you like you trade respect for infantalism, right and like that. That that really stood out to me because I have to remind myself that Momo is like this sncient individual entity who deserves respect and to be treated with respect. I just picked up any time she you know, she looks at me a certain way and it sets off my cuteness response. Like I've really had to grapple with that. And luckily, you mean's like really aware of that because she hasn't She's always been a very small person and she us got get picked up all the time, so she's like identifies with Mama on that level. Um, And it's been like really an exercise and restraint. Sometimes it's just be like, no, I've just got to treat Mama like she doesn't want to be picked up right now kind of thing. You know. But I thought Canascar Jenascar really made a good point that we we miss a lot of like what makes an animal and animal in in favor of just seeing it as something cute and a kind of a plaything in a way. Yeah, and if like there's no clear reminder that, um, you know, I've always had dogs and multiple dogs and love dogs, but when you see a dog like you know, go after a squirrel and catch it and eat it or something, that these are the reminders like these are these are animals, you know, like the same cute dog will also you know, eat poop out of it's a but if it could right or eat your face if you died on the couch and it was locked in the house with in a second. Sure, Um, so we probably shouldn't finish until we talk about kauaie culture. Yeah, this is the Japanese culture that is um well, this says it best. Maybe the greatest pop culture expression of cute. You think Pikachu think um like pop singers dressed as a little sort of pigtailed schoolgirls. Uh. It's it's a very very big trend in Japan. It's huge, Like everybody has a cute mascot, Hello kiddies everywhere. It's just enormous. And apparently it kind of like grew and evolved and morphed over time, starting with this um student protest movement in the sixties, where like the Japanese kids like um just to sided, they didn't want to go to class anymore. They sat around and read manga comic books instead and kind of regress to back to childhood. And then that kind of developed in the seventies into a trend for cute see bubbly handwriting that led to Hello Kitty, and then weirdly, it also made an appearance um as Uh what is it Burrico women, which is very childlike. Um women who adopted this this kind of demeanor UM two number one, uh cut off any sense of threat that they presented when they entered the workforce, but also to kind of keep um unwanted advances from their male colleagues. At Bay two, they entered the workforce as if they were young kids, little girls, giggly and all that kind of stuff. And this is like a persona that they adopted that eventually became this trend, this cuteness trend that's like everywhere in Japan. I never thought about the bubble letters. That's so interesting because I've always sort of wondered, like why elementary school girls. It seems like I would write in those big, juicy round letters. Yeah, it makes sense, it does. But that was apparently where Hawaii culture came from originally as a handwriting thing. Interesting. Yeah, I was curious here at the end, I was like, has science proven what the cutest animals are? And I did find something from list Verse and Jonathan Cantor the top ten cutest animals in the world, according to science. But I see nothing in the article about how science proved this, literally nothing, but I figured i'd read it just for frenzies. Number ten is most baby mammals, okay. Number nine is the slow Loris. You ever see those things? You should look at some of these. In fact, I'm gonna go ahead and text you number one right now because and I guess i'll just send it to you and are since she's on our most recent thread, she'll be like, what the heck is this all right? Coming your way? So? Number eight is the mere cat, which I think mere cancelok a little sinister personally. Yeah, I can see that because of the like there they got the bandit masks on. Yeah. Uh. Number seven is the koala. Yeah, did you just Lauras looks like, no, that's not a Lauras that I sent you. Are you looking at Laris? Well? What is this what I sent you? We'll just put a pen in. It's number one, okay, Yeah, I can see that. Number six is the Flapjack and Dumbo octopode. Okay, um, piglets. Number five match the fennic fox. Number four, that's the fox with those huge ears and make those great sounds. The red pandas number three, the panda bear, the white panda, black and white pant is nowhere on this list. Weird, this guy's way off. This must have been a list from Jimmy Science, his roommate. According to Jimmy Science, I think you mean James B. Science, number two with sea otters and then number one. I don't know how I've lived my whole life without knowing that this thing existed. But the quoca q u o k k A from Australia. It's a small marsupial uh same family as a kangaroo, apparently in southwestern Australia. And that picture I sent you, my friend, just google smiling quoca and you'll see this one picture of this quoca literally jumping hands out, smiling at the camera lens like give me a hug, Like, give me a hug. This is and I think, I mean, n you know, they said it's because they look like they're smiling. Obviously is one of the big reasons. But almost every picture you look at a quoca, it's got this little smile. It's unbelievable. Hey, I have to say, based on the screenshot you you need to charge your phone soon. Uh yeah, and that was even earlier, So I get that same stress because I'm I'm generally at least guy. Yeah, and so when I see people do screenshots and as that read, yeah, boy, I can't even take it so um to finish up, chuck that the converse of what you're talking about the cutest animals, um, the fact that they exist also kind of implies that there are non cute animals that exist and that they're less likely to get our attention. Um. And as a result, there is a kind of tongue in cheek. But I also get the impression kind of serious group called the Ugly Animal Preservation Society whose mascot is the blob Fish, which makes a lot of sense, and their slogan is we can't all be pandas I love that. Yeah, So they're looking out for the ugly animals that we're going to wipe out because they're not cute. Well, I know that is a big deal when it comes to conservation, is that that people can conservations have a much harder time getting money and stuff. And we talked about it in our Zoos episode. Yeah, like that's why they lead with giraffes and elephants and stuff like that. Was that the episode? I know we talked about it before and they were like, look, man, just leave us alone. This is the important stuff because it saves the other stuff. Yeah, exactly. That blobfish that looks like man, yeah, ugly cute maybe yeah, chemo kawaii. If kawaii sounds familiar, that's probably because you heard it at the very beginning of the Quin Stefani song Haull of back Girl, where she sees a bunch of hard juku girls in Japan and goes, kawai nice. That blobfish look like look like it's constantly saying okay, I know they shouldn't call it that or fish. The blobfish definitely works sooner man um, Well, since we have wrapped it up with the old blobfish, if you want to know more about the science of cute, just start looking at cute pictures of the coo ooka. Sure, that's a great place to start. And since Chuck said sure, that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this. I'm getting called out here and it's something I haven't thought about. I got called out by a couple of people for different reasons for saying, uh, this phrase you know unless you live under a rock that you know blank. One person said, Hey, that just makes me feel dumb because I didn't know about one of these things. Sure, I think that's the point, right, that's your intent. No, I don't want to make anyone to feel bad, but this is a different kind of response, and uh, well worth reading. Hey, guys, making my way through a backlog log of episodes, and I noticed the thing that seems to pop up from time to time and your descriptions of popular culture and products like hang gliding at a sketch and Rubik's Cube. You make comments like and if you don't know what one of these is or looks like, get out from under your rock and go look up a picture. Uh, someone who has been blind since birth? Though, my problem isn't that I've been living under a rock, but rather the pictures to me are worth zero words. Yeah, I really got me good. I grew up in the eighties, so everyone had a Rubik's Cube, and I played with my fair share of them, even though I couldn't solve them for many things in life. Though, if I haven't physically touched it or had it described to me. I only have the faintest idea of what it looks like. In fact, I was a music music education major in college, and it wasn't until my sophomore year in age nineteen that I touched a brass instrument for the very first time. Uh, the French horn still fascinates me. I've enjoyed listening to your show for years, and I've learned lots of visual information from you, from what jiraffes looked like to fashion choices of punk rockers. I wanted to make you aware of this though. You can help people who can't look at pictures, whether uh, we're blind or whether we're on the road driving in a truck and we don't want to pull out our phones to look at pictures. Thanks for years of learning and laughter. Appreciate the work warmly, Ryan for Minneapolis and Ryan in I have nothing to say but great point, and I'll do better. Very nice, Chuck. I don't think there's anything else you could say. You know why, because you're a good person and jerk. That's right. And now I will try and describe things to the best of my ability, which might not be great but I think you did a good job with the kawaka description. Smiling wrote it. Yeah, it looks like it's smiling. That's all you need to know that. Um, well, if you want to take a chuck or meat a task, that's There's not a lot of sport in that. But if you want to do it anyway, that's fine. You can send it to his via email, wrap it up and send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts for my heart Radio because it the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know

If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD,  
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