The Science Behind Cute Aggression
The one time “I could just eat you!” isn’t a real threat.
The latest addition to our household is a disheveled, long-haired kitten with a bronze patch of hair on the top of her head. Her eyes look perpetually worried, and she already has an adorable signature move of stretching her paws long when she’s lying on her back.
Just thinking about her cuteness makes me want to hug her tiny body in a tight squeeze and then eat her right up.
Cute aggression, or playful aggression as it is also called, is a recently named psychological phenomenon. The first paper outlining this behavior was published just a few years ago by psychologists Oriana Aragon and Rebecca Dyer.
This might be the only situation in which a totally sane person can verbally express their adoration in an over-the-top manner without eliciting some funny stares.
According to current research, the cause of cute aggression is pretty straightforward. When we see something adorable, our brain experiences such overwhelmingly positive emotions that it then attempts to regulate those intense emotions with a negative response.
