“Cute aggression” and brain activity

When you see something cute, what do you feel? What do you want to do with this ‘cute thing’? What if you take this in or hand, what type of affection do you would like to do? As a mentioned before, some characteristics of babies and toys might influence our attention and behavior. The Kawaii characteristics awaken a feeling of care and the necessity of take of this something with big head and eyes, and small body. But, probably, do you have others feelings when see these babies/toys: the desire to pinch, squeeze and/or bite them. This feeling is defined by “cute aggression”.

Cute aggression have been considered an example of dimorphous expression of emotions, that is, when someone have a feeling, but expresse in opposite way. For instance, at “Joker” (did you see? You should!), the protagonist laughs at completely inappropriate moments, such as when he was being beaten. Another example is when you cry with happiness. One of the possible explanation for cute aggression is an bottom-up mechanism to control a very positive emotion that we feel when see something cute. However, “cute things” is tools used by children socialization too. No wonder we present children with cute plush toys. But what happened in the brain during a “cute aggression”?

In order to answer this question, Stravropolus & Alba conduced an interesting study entitled ““It’s so Cute I Could Crush It!”: Understanding Neural Mechanisms of Cute Aggression”. The authors aimed identify neural bases of cute aggression through the analyzes of three event-related potentials (ERP): N200 (emotional related), stimulus preceding negativity (SPN; reward anticipation) and reward processing (RewP). Fifty-four participants were included in the experiment. First, participants completed questionnaire about dimorphous expressions of emotions, whose had questions about cute aggressive, overwhelmed by emotion, approachability, appraisal, and feelings about caretaking, answered by a Likert scale. Then, the subjects saw four blocks of 36 visual stimulus of different images of humans’ and animals’ babies (more cute), and humans’ and animals’ adults (less cute). In the end of each block, participants answered the question: “how they felt about the photographs they just saw”. During the visual stimulus, ERP (through EEG Brain Products ActiCHamp) was measured by 32 channels.

Results of all dominus of dimorphous expressions’ questionnaire, showed high score to more cute images. 'More cute' animals (babies) elicited higher N200’ amplitude compared to adults animals. Also, N200 amplitude for cute animals and individual ratings of dimorphous expressions of positive emotions was significatively correlated.  Positive correlation was found between RewP amplitudes for cute animals and cute aggression ratings toward cute animals.

 

Fonte: doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00300

Fonte: doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00300

It is possible to concluded that cute animals would provoke larger emotional impact, considering larger N200 amplitude. Also, the reward system appears be strong linked to experiences of cute aggression and this might be an example of dimorphous expressions. Thus, cute aggressive has a neural mechanism linked to emotional salience and reward processing. These findings might useful to treatment for psychological disorders linked to emotions. Futures should investigate clinical populations and children, considering these audiences might be more sensible to the cuteness.

 

Reference:

Stravropolus & Alba (2018). “It’s so Cute I Could Crush It!”: Understanding Neural Mechanisms of Cute Aggression. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00300