'cute aggression': why do we want to bite cute things?

the urge to nibble adorable babies or squeeze baby animals is our brains being overwhelmed by cuteness — and it affects half of the population.

by robin roberts

published jul 28, 2022

4 minute read

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4 minute read

join the conversation

the urge to bite cute things affects half the population

some scientists trace the desire to bite a baby to our primate origins when friendly social biting was, and in some cases still is, common. getty

jillian taylor is a grandmother and great-grandmother a dozen times over, and with each new bundle of joy placed in her arms, she’s overcome with a desire to squeeze and nibble them. “i just want to hug them so tight and pinch their chubby little cheeks,” she says. “i even want to bite their fat little feet.”

but taylor is quick to emphasize she would never harm her grandchildren, instead, she coddles them carefully.

“i don’t know where the urges come from, but thankfully they pass quickly,” she says. “instead of crushing them, i just sniff their sweet smelling heads.”

no harm intended

taylor is not alone in her desire to smother her grandbabies with affection. in fact, the feelings she describes are so common there’s a term for it: “cute aggression.” it was first coined in 2015 by researchers at yale university, led by oriana r. aragón, phd, now an assistant professor at the university of cincinnati, as part of a study into dimorphous (or contradictory) expressions of intense emotions — for example, weeping with joy or smiling at tragedy.

aragón’s team found that people reported feeling more cute aggression towards baby animals as opposed to adult animals. there was also a greater response toward images of human babies that were digitally enhanced to have bigger eyes, rounder cheeks and smaller noses, which presumably made them look more infantile and therefore cuter. and as overwhelmed as these participants were at the sheer cuteness of these babes, they also simultaneously felt more aggression — as in wanting to squeeze them. but no harm was ever intended: the people who felt both overwhelmed by, and aggressive towards, the more adorable babies also wanted to protect and care for them.

about half of adults feel overwhelmed by cuteness

katherine stavropoulos, phd, associate professor, school of education at the university of california, riverside, wanted to take it a step further by examining the brains of people overcome by the sight of charming little cherubs (which, she says, is roughly half of all adults). she and a colleague used electrophysiology to measure the electrical activity in the brains of 54 young adults who were, as in aragón’s experiment, shown images of cute (baby) animals and less-cute (adult) animals, as well as cute (enhanced) and less-cute (non-enhanced) human babies. similar to the yale study, participants showed a greater response towards the baby animals over the adult animals, as well as the cuter baby images.

stavropoulos says the strong brain activity of cute aggressors could be tied to both its emotion and reward system — not unlike the effects of dopamine (that feel-good neurotransmitter that activates the brain’s reward centre), which can be overpowering. cute aggression, a somewhat negative emotion, could be the brain’s way of tempering feelings toward cute things — basically giving us a moment to pull ourselves together so we don’t, well, squeeze the life out of them.

stavropoulos also believes these emotions evolved as a kind of protective mechanism. “if you’re overwhelmed to the point of being unable to handle it, cute aggression may balance that out enough to allow you to care for these fragile little beings that depend so much on us,” she says, pointing out. that people who don’t feel cute aggression aren’t less caring, they’re simply not as overwhelmed.

aggression actually correlates to caring

other scientists trace the desire to bite a baby to our primate origins when friendly social biting was, and in some cases still is, common. some monkey species love holding, hugging and nibbling another monkey’s baby, which is a good thing considering these groups share caretaking of infants.

nipping is also prevalent among mammals that play-fight, but as with the urge to chomp on an adorable baby, there’s no intent to hurt. in fact, primatologist susan perry at the university of california, los angeles, who has observed capuchin monkeys clamp down on each other, believes they’re testing their social bonds. if one sticks its finger in another’s mouth and withdraws it fully intact, that says, “you can trust me.”

while aragón focuses on the signalling value of dimorphous expressions, stavropoulos plans to expand her research into cute aggression to study the phenomenon in wider populations, such as mothers with postpartum depression, people with autism, people with and without pets or babies of their own, and children.

“one thing that studies have found pretty consistently is that cute aggression does seem to have something to do with being overwhelmed,” stavropoulos says. “the people who report feeling overwhelmed by how cute something is or how positively they feel about a thing are the people who tend to report cute aggression.”

she adds the perhaps cute aggression is mostly about our ability to regulate emotions.

“of course, people have different emotion regulation abilities, but we’re not talking about diagnosis or disorder; it’s just a normal distribution within a healthy population,” she says.

in the meantime, if you feel the urge to crush a cutie, like taylor the grandmother, stick to sniffing those baby’s heads. it’s a less aggressive way to release dopamine — and it will also look less weird.

robin roberts is a vancouver-based writer.

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