In Case You Missed It…
Why do we find babies and young children cute?
For decades, the standard scientific answer has been that we evolved to find them cute because they’re vulnerable, and perceptions of cuteness motivate us to protect them and keep them alive.
But a bold new paper by psychologists Alexis Garsmeur and Nicolas Baumard makes a compelling case that this explanation is fundamentally flawed. Among other things, it can’t explain why the cutest children aren’t the most vulnerable, or why older children, adults, and even romantic partners can also be seen as cute.
Garsmeur and Baumard’s alternative theory solves these lingering puzzles. And it also promises to explain much that the old theory can’t, such as why we want to squeeze or nibble cute things (so-called cute aggression), why cuteness has become so culturally prominent in modern societies, why we keep pets, and how cuteness helped shape the evolution of domesticated animals - and even of our own species.
Most importantly, the theory points to a fundamental distinction that generations of researchers overlooked: Parents do two very different things for their children, and cuteness evolved primarily to motivate the one we’ve largely ignored.