The new science of cute | Hacker News Reader

The new science of cute

theguardian.com

61 pointspmcpinto44 comments

Japan is an hierarchical society in which the pressures flowing from the top can build to unbearable levels near the bottom. The outlook for many is quite bleak, with an unthinkably small possibility of escape from one’s allotted role. Many live in conditions that may be best described as human storage. Cute things offer an escape into a fantasy world devoid of life’s powerlessness in a manner compatible with consumerism. The aggressive and masculine traits valued near the top are sometimes too confrontational for most, resulting in a proliferation of cute, comforting and non-aggressive symbols throughout society. Even police boxes have cute mascots to soften the intimidation of their presence.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere how domestication brings about cuteness in animals. When animals are breed to be less aggressive they look more like babies. We are not even sure if humans are naturally selecting the traits (as baby like features seem less aggressive) or that just inherently happens when aggression is removed (ie lower testosterone would cause less maturity).

I believe the study on domesticating foxes showed this. As they removed aggressive foxes from the gene pool the left overs were unbelievable "cute" with soft fur, round eyes, etc. Seriously a domesticated fox is a pretty animal.

Of course I believe there is an exception to this of the house hold cat. Supposedly cats are technically not domesticated (I'll find link on this shortly but yes this mainly a joke as domestication is likely a multi-faceted continuum).

You are right but it's the other way around. Being cute brings about domestication in an animal. Dogs are just more common because they were wolves 15000 years ago and stuck around groups of human hunters for leftover hunt. In return they acted as protection since others animals didn't come close, whereas humans were able to control them with fire. So humans domesticated the cute ones.

Strangely, domestication can bring about cuteness. Radiolab did a story on the domestication of the silver fox [0]. They discuss how domestication yielded physical changes.

"Through generations of selectively breeding a captive population, Belyaev noticed not only increased docility, but also unexpected physical changes."

[0] - http://www.radiolab.org/story/91696-new-nice/

Domestication brings about neoteny. Adult domesticated animals maintain appearance and behaviors that wild animals only have when they are young.

Young mammals are very cute to us, possibly because we are mammals too and inherit our cute-sense from a common mammal ancestor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny#In_domestic_animals

There is even an old theory that modern day humans are neotenous products of a proto-ape-man. A list usually follows of those characteristics that humans share with infant modern apes: less hair, larger head to body ratio, shorter arms, less muzzle, etc. Then 'futurists' grab hold of that and imagine current human babies as our adult future; is that how the bug-eyed hairless 'gray alien'[1] arises, or the 2001 "star child"?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_alien

I have to wonder if this is partially responsible for the "Asians are smarter than everyone else" stereotype, given that Asians have more neotenous features than other races on average.

From what i remember reading, basically how you domesticate an animal is to convince them that they're still babies (and will always be babies for the rest of their lives) and that their humans are their mothers. Obviously, an animal is going to love their mother and not run from them or attack them, and you want them to apply that behavior to us. And you do that by breeding neoteny into them.

Even as wild as domestic cats can act, they still retain a considerable amount of kitten-like behaviors well into adulthood. You can distinguish someone's pet cat from a feral cat largely because the pet cat still acts like a kitten. A hyperactive, playful kitten with sharp implements of death who treats small animals as their toys to play with until dead, but still a kitten.

>Supposedly cats are technically not domesticated

I have a Siberian cat from a breeder and I've compared him to pictures of Siberian cats that live in Siberian forest(in videos of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agafia_Lykova, i saw some of her cats. You can see one here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68&feature=youtu.be... ) and mine's definitely much more "cuter" .

> In a study at the University of Michigan in 2012, visual information expert Sookyung Cho asked subjects “to design a cute rectangle by adjusting the size, proportion, roundness, rotation, and color of the figure”. What she found supported the idea that “smallness, roundness, tiltedness, and lightness of color can serve as determinants of perceived cuteness in artifact design”. It mattered, she found, whether the person designing the rectangle was in the USA or South Korea. Cuteness is nothing if not culturally specific, and that itself has become a rich focus of inquiry.

> [...]

> Teddy bears exist because the night is dark and long and at some point your parents have to go to bed and leave you. There is real comfort in cuteness.

> “Filling in an emotional need is exactly where kawaii plays a significant role,” writes Christine R Yano, a professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the author of Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s trek across the Pacific. “Even in America, journalist Nicholas Kristof has written of an ‘empathy gap’ in today’s society,” states Yano. “He points to the place of objects that may be considered promoters of ‘happiness’, ‘solace’, ‘comfort’. When a society needs to heal, it seeks comfort in the familiar. And often the familiar may reside in ‘cute’. Witness the use of teddy bears as sources of comfort for firefighters in the wake of NYC’s 9-11. So I see kawaii things as holding the potential as empathy generators.”

I wonder how these two points tie in to the modern obsession with cats. They seem to fill a real need people have, but speaking as someone who is unaffected by cat-cuteness (which is weird because I generally am very susceptable to cute things) and who is treated as a freak of nature by many, I think there's also a certain aspect of trying to conform to societal expectations.

PS: The Guardian aritcle is a reprint (republish? reshare?) of an article at Mosaic[0], which features a lot more pictures.

[0] http://mosaicscience.com/story/cuteness-japan-kawaii

Cats are furry, murderous assholes

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill

http://www.kittycams.uga.edu/index.html

That's what makes them cute, though.

Eh? IMO it's their appearance and style that makes them cute, not their violent tendencies! I never hear two cats scrapping in an alleyway and think 'how cute!'.

On the contrary, many of cats' predator characteristics make them cute -- for example, their large, forward-facing eyes, the way they pounce on and bat at things (the little ass wiggle they do just before striking is particularly adorable), their little fangs (giving a character cat fangs is an anime way of conveying "mischievous cuteness"), etc.

They are also fairly intelligent. Intelligence can be cute, and the cuteness of intelligence is enduring. Rabbits are cute to look at, but make for boring pets; cats and dogs can fascinate and charm us for years and quickly become considered friends and the near-equals of humans. And don't tell me that a cat who's figured out how to operate doorknobs or lightswitches isn't adorable.

A lot of this has to do with the fact that we are also predators and these characteristics remind us of ourselves (in particular, our young).

> "their large, forward-facing eyes"

Appearance.

> "the way they pounce on and bat at things"

Style.

> "their little fangs"

IMO, fangs aren't exactly a cute feature. Cats aren't cute all the time. This isn't a cute image of a cat IMO, for example...

http://baddogneedsrottenhome.com/images/emails/55c8ce1c28a9b...

> "They are also fairly intelligent. Intelligence can be cute, and the cuteness of intelligence is enduring. Rabbits are cute to look at, but make for boring pets; cats and dogs can fascinate and charm us for years and quickly become considered friends and the near-equals of humans. And don't tell me that a cat who's figured out how to operate doorknobs or lightswitches isn't adorable."

Again, style.

It's possible to see a cat's playfulness and intelligence as separate from its roots as a predator. I don't think we actively have 'killer' in mind when we see a cat look cute or do something cute.

And I'm not saying we consciously think "oh, they prey on other animals, that's cute" -- just that characteristics they evolved to make tgem better predators makes us unconsciously perceive them as cute because they remind of us of a predatory animal we intrinsically find cute -- ourselves.

> "a predatory animal we intrinsically find cute -- ourselves"

I wouldn't describe our predatory instincts as cute.

Furthermore, there are tons of animals that are not seen as predatory and are still cute. To me they're completely separate traits. For example, which one is cuter to you...

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LgINvKhd2wc/hqdefault.jpg

https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2014/10/01/10/44/he...

Cats' playing is straight-up hunting practice. If you pay attention to a kitty playing with something, you can tell that they're practicing how to stalk, hunt, kill, and eviscerate their prey.

And it's adorable. I used to tell my parents' kitty "You're such a cute widdwe pwedator, yes you are!". Sometimes while she was playing, other times after watching her hunt and kill a lizard in the backyard. There wasn't much difference between her behavior between those times.

The point I'm making is that the cuteness is not determined by their desire to kill, it's their appearance and style that makes them cute.

If being a predator was a deciding factor in making them cute, then other predators would automatically be cute too. Perhaps you think all animals are cute, but I don't think of sharks, snakes, crocodiles, etc... as cute.

In other words, IMO it's not what they do that makes an animal cute, it's the way that they do it (and/or their appearance).

Putting "cat" and "murder" in the same phrase instantly triggers the following one in my mind, which I thought was the one you were linking to:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/kitty_pet

Well, from now on I'll remember to interpret every cat's purr or meow as a crazed outburst of, "Blood for the blood god!"

"If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember."

― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

Regarding cats and what makes a "cat person". I suspect it's due to toxoplasma parasite. The brain parasite makes cat's prey less afraid of cats, and it also has been seen to change the behaviour of humans. People who are not cat people may just lack the parasite in their brains.

Toxoplasmosis is believed to slow reaction times in humans but is dormant in the brain unless you become immunocompromised. The effect is has on rats is quite specific: it makes them attracted to the smell of cat urine, this bringing them closer to cats to be eaten.

Since cat urine is still quite unpleasant smelling as reported by all all cat owners, your hypothesis appears flawed.

You also have a prior problem: why do people like cats if they previously did not have cats and thus not have a vector (cat faeces) to be exposed to toxoplasmosis?

Also, people who are "not cat people" need to have been around a cat in the first place to develop such experience. Resulting in exposure to toxoplasma.

"He is almost regarded as a living entity, a kind of fun ursine household god (it is perhaps significant that the very first licensed Kumamon product was a Buddhist shrine emblazoned with his face)."

Things like this fascinate me about Japan. How is this understood? Is it a "South Park" style sacrilegious parody, or do Japanese Buddhists actually find this totally acceptable?

I know nothing about Japanese culture, but my guess is that it is monks trying to be hip.

Some of the onookers will roll their eyes, and others will agree that this is a nice way for them to keep up with contemporary culture.

Not unlike a Hello Kitty rosary (do these exist?), it is a votive item used in a personal household. It will raise a few eyebrows, but won't be decried as sacrilegious.

Japanese have a different concept of sacredness and sacrilege than what we Westerners are used to. In Christianity, God is inherently good -- the source of all good things -- so anything which desecrates, trivializes, or insults God is inherently evil. Note the use of increasingly obscure terms to refer to God rather than calling him by name -- "just to be safe" -- especially in Judaism.

In Japan, the kami aren't really good or evil -- they just are. Most of them are more like neighbors than lord and master of the earth. So paying them respect can take many forms, including offering them cute shrines. I'm sure people believe that if the kami were angry about it, they'd let you know.

I am by no means an expert, but after living here for a while I have had to adjust my conception of what sacrelegious means. I think my understanding of it (after growing up in the US and primarily being exposed to christian and jewish customs) was 'pious sincerity' or 'seriousness'. In Japan, religious practice is not as serious as I was used to, even if many people are very serious about observing.

There's not as much value placed in physical artifacts. Historic buildings get razed (pour one out for the Hotel Okura), earthquakes destroy cities… people move on. The culture needs to be respected and honored but new artifacts will always arise which honor that line of culture. You respect your ancestors by however you show respect.. bowing, keeeling, building a shrine out of discarded PS2's or whatever. If it is heartfelt, then how you do it mostly reflects on you.

So associating a mascot (which is a totally accepted cultural tool) with a religious artifact isn't considered bad because there is no negative association with it. People love kumamon! Anyway, that's my view on it. I am sure I have a lot to learn still.

As an aside: Even the police like to get in on the cute. Note the mascot at the bottom of the tokyo police website. Pepo-kun is all over Tokyo to make the police more approachable. He's named after the sound that police cars make: "peee-poh-peee-poh"

http://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.jp/multilingual/english/ind...

To add to your comment on the transience of historical buildings, the Ise Jingu shrine gets torn down and rebuilt every 20 years, and this has been happening for 1300 years!

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-japanese-shrin...

Also, according to Freakonomics, Japanese houses are "disposable", commonly torn down and rebuilt. http://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-are-japanese-homes-dispo...

Cuteness is a look of a healthy (lack of abnormalities) child, and youth in general.

Beauty is youth + health (average face = lack of deformities) for all species - good genes, just reached reproductive age (with all necessary markers).

Sexual attractiveness is a bit more complicated - species specific markers of youth, health, good genes (parasite resistance, foraging, etc) and social status.

Nothing to see here. Humans aren't descendants of gods, they are still mere animals.

Sexual dimorphism is also important for sexual attractiveness.

I wrote about this a few years ago, with the goal to answer the question of "what is cute, really?" http://uxmag.com/articles/beyond-emotion

I wonder if zenbo flopped https://zenbo.asus.com

Why do manufacturers need to put big goofy eyes on robots? I am perfectly fine with an astro-mech style robot that is obviously a robot.

Well you're not wrong for liking it, but you also are (presumably) a techie of some form, be that programming, electronics or whatever. That implies a pretty strong aesthetic bias that does not represent the average person.

That video shows what Japanese think Americans are like?

Isn't this another symptom of infantilization of culture? Similarly to how the most successful movies are about wizards and magical rings.

infantilization of culture?

Why are wizards and fantasy not allowed for adults?

"All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach."

Replace propaganda with marketing, PR, journalism...

Why would the "wizards and rings" of popular culture be any more infantilizing than the "angels and demons" that culture and philosophy have taken seriously for thousands of years?

Many people seem to have somehow grown to an adult age without ever growing out of the teenage predilection for considering edgy, grimdark fantasies as "grown-up" and "real", despite those fantasies failing to resemble the real world at all.

I think this goes hand in hand with economic prosperity. I grew up in the third world and by the time you grow up all your joy in life is defeated by life and living. You loose childlike joy and become a "serious" person and the culture correspondingly encourages "growing up".

In western, richer countries there is no such pressure on culture to make people "serious".

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