Although the first human reaction after seeing a baby making a face or a puppy scratching its ear can be associated to its cuteness and men's biological nature, one professor linked it to a deeper reasoning: Philosophy. Sianne Ngai, literary and cultural theory professor at Stanford University came out with a philosophical evidence regarding what people consider cute.
A previous study conducted by Konrad Lorenz , ethologist, contented that the chance of parents fulfilling their obligation on their children are connected to a child's cuteness. Konrad believes that several activities of children can cause favorable reaction from adults. Results of the study show that cute infants are more likeable and cause their mothers to be more playful with them. Thus, the more cute babies are the greater hold they have toward their mothers. However, Ngai's study suggests that cuteness can be a negative attribute or a disadvantage.
Ngai explained, "The smaller and less formally articulated or more bloblike the object, the cuter it becomes-in part because smallness and blobbishness suggest greater malleability and thus a greater capacity for being handled. From here it is only a short step to see how the formal properties associated with cuteness-smallness, compactness, softness, simplicity, and pliancy-call forth specific affects: helplessness, pitifulness, and even despondency. There is thus a sense in which the minor taste concept of cuteness might be said to get at the process by which all taste concepts are formed and thus at the aesthetic relation all of them capture." Ngai insisted that a person's cute attribute can also be related to weakness and fragility.
According to Ngai, a person seeing a cute colleague may stimulate the person's sadistic side- the desire to lay power over the other person. She stated, "It hinges on a sentimental attitude toward the diminutive and/or weak, which is why cute objects-formally simple or noncomplex, and deeply associated with the infantile, the feminine, and the unthreatening-get even cuter when perceived as injured or disabled."
Though many people define cuteness as adorable and link it to other positive traits, Ngai, suggested that the word 'cute' may sometimes connote a negative meaning. "Unlike the beautiful, which is a judgment, it's not really clear that calling something cute is praise or criticism," Ngai said.
