I wonder what the distribution of cuteness-responsiveness as a trait looks like. I notice that some people just don’t get much from pictures like that bunny, but they’ll react much more “as expected” to the baby.
Interesting question. I’ve met people that straight-up didn’t get the cutes from human babies but did respond to baby animals, though, and I can’t think of any for whom the reverse is true; n=1, but this is still somewhat surprising to me.
I can think of some sketchy evopsych reasons why this might be true without scrubbing the infantilism hypothesis—perhaps a lot of the human cuteness response got wired in at an evolutionary stage when proto-human infants had fur. But I can also think of a number of countervailing points; baby chimpanzees are cute, for example, but there are cuter animals. Perhaps a simpler explanation is that certain animals serve purely by happenstance as superstimuli for the human cute response, but as a species we’re sufficiently willing to kill and eat cute things that this didn’t have any significant survival effects. This requires that there be things other than the cuteness response protecting human infants, but that seems obviously true to me.
(I maintain, however, that jumping spiders are objectively adorable.)
Thinking about the sheer number of animals in different phyles who provide dedicated parental care for at least some portion of the offspring’s life, it seems to me like the “cute response protects baby” explanation may be putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. There are poison dart frogs who make damn devoted daddies (housing their tadpoles in little pools of water that form in bromeliad leaves, maintaining the condition of the water, and begging for passing females to lay an unfertilized egg so baby can eat it); there are primates who kick the young out fairly early; octopus mothers stop eating altogether (even though they’re still capable of it physiologically) and just guard their eggs until they die. Sure, if we want to squee over a helpless baby it WOULD probably improve that baby’s survival chances, but I rather suspect that devoted infant care is not a good single-factor explanation here.
(I maintain, however, that jumping spiders are objectively adorable.)
Well, there are clearly behavioral traits other than the cute response that go into protecting human infants; if phenotypical cuteness was the only factor here, for example, there’d be little incentive to preferentially protect your own children. Parents that I’ve talked to have on occasion described their own kids as apocalyptically cute relative to pretty much anything else, but I’m pretty sure there are things other than phenotype involved here.
I don’t think the evidence for a pedomorphic interpretation of cuteness is quite conclusive, but there do seem to be a serious dearth of competing hypotheses, and the evidence is certainly suggestive: the combination of small body size, a rounded body and head of large size relative to limbs, big eyes, soft features, playful behavior etc. all seem like they add up to a pretty good match. It also seems to be a culturally universal phenomenon, and those are quite rare.
Alicorn’s point about cuteness giving us an unusual number of false positives relative to (say) sexiness is well taken, but I’m not sure how strong it actually is; superstimuliforsexiness that don’t match real human phenotypes are definitely out there. Sexual selection’s also under intense pressure relative to most other evolutionary cues, which might imply a need for our instincts in that area to be more accurate, although it seems (to my non-biologist self) like childrearing should be in the same ballpark.
Superstimuli for sexiness are like superstimuli for taste: take the reproductively best things in the ancestral environment, and exaggerate their characteristics outside of what was found there. For example, prominent sexual characteristics are sexy; Escher girls made mostly of breasts and buttocks are therefore sexier. Watanuki is such an example; the gangliness and androgyny are are but possible, the legs and facial structure are exaggerated but not that far from realistic equivalents.
Also, are many people sincerely attracted to Jessica Rabbit? It seems to me like she only represents sexiness, like we immediately understand a stick figure in a skirt to mean “woman”.
Interesting question. I’ve met people that straight-up didn’t get the cutes from human babies but did respond to baby animals, though, and I can’t think of any for whom the reverse is true; n=1, but this is still somewhat surprising to me.
I can think of some sketchy evopsych reasons why this might be true without scrubbing the infantilism hypothesis—perhaps a lot of the human cuteness response got wired in at an evolutionary stage when proto-human infants had fur. But I can also think of a number of countervailing points; baby chimpanzees are cute, for example, but there are cuter animals. Perhaps a simpler explanation is that certain animals serve purely by happenstance as superstimuli for the human cute response, but as a species we’re sufficiently willing to kill and eat cute things that this didn’t have any significant survival effects. This requires that there be things other than the cuteness response protecting human infants, but that seems obviously true to me.
(I maintain, however, that jumping spiders are objectively adorable.)
Thinking about the sheer number of animals in different phyles who provide dedicated parental care for at least some portion of the offspring’s life, it seems to me like the “cute response protects baby” explanation may be putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. There are poison dart frogs who make damn devoted daddies (housing their tadpoles in little pools of water that form in bromeliad leaves, maintaining the condition of the water, and begging for passing females to lay an unfertilized egg so baby can eat it); there are primates who kick the young out fairly early; octopus mothers stop eating altogether (even though they’re still capable of it physiologically) and just guard their eggs until they die. Sure, if we want to squee over a helpless baby it WOULD probably improve that baby’s survival chances, but I rather suspect that devoted infant care is not a good single-factor explanation here.
Moths too!
Well, there are clearly behavioral traits other than the cute response that go into protecting human infants; if phenotypical cuteness was the only factor here, for example, there’d be little incentive to preferentially protect your own children. Parents that I’ve talked to have on occasion described their own kids as apocalyptically cute relative to pretty much anything else, but I’m pretty sure there are things other than phenotype involved here.
I don’t think the evidence for a pedomorphic interpretation of cuteness is quite conclusive, but there do seem to be a serious dearth of competing hypotheses, and the evidence is certainly suggestive: the combination of small body size, a rounded body and head of large size relative to limbs, big eyes, soft features, playful behavior etc. all seem like they add up to a pretty good match. It also seems to be a culturally universal phenomenon, and those are quite rare.
Alicorn’s point about cuteness giving us an unusual number of false positives relative to (say) sexiness is well taken, but I’m not sure how strong it actually is; superstimuli for sexiness that don’t match real human phenotypes are definitely out there. Sexual selection’s also under intense pressure relative to most other evolutionary cues, which might imply a need for our instincts in that area to be more accurate, although it seems (to my non-biologist self) like childrearing should be in the same ballpark.
Superstimuli for sexiness are like superstimuli for taste: take the reproductively best things in the ancestral environment, and exaggerate their characteristics outside of what was found there. For example, prominent sexual characteristics are sexy; Escher girls made mostly of breasts and buttocks are therefore sexier. Watanuki is such an example; the gangliness and androgyny are are but possible, the legs and facial structure are exaggerated but not that far from realistic equivalents.
Also, are many people sincerely attracted to Jessica Rabbit? It seems to me like she only represents sexiness, like we immediately understand a stick figure in a skirt to mean “woman”.