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
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