Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

The “Cute” Factor

Posted in Education, Qualitative, Science by Elliott Back on January 5th, 2006.

The New York Times is running an article called The Cute Factor which basically concludes the humans have an incredibly low threshold for cuteness–basically anything resembling infants of our species in any way is considered cute. Which must be why red is the color of Valentine’s day and love.

Scientists have decided that “bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait” are cute traits, and that “extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need” are behavior cues for cuteness. This sounds exactly like the combination for anime:

Cute Stack

Then again, there’s too much cute in the world these days. Everything is cute. Sometimes you just want to rage against the cute, but “the human cuteness detector is set at such a low barthat it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby.” Our own biology fights against us realists. Let me mention that much that is cute in nature is ” accidental cuteness…”

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2006 at 1:54 pm and is tagged with valentine s day, extreme youth, human baby, cuteness, realists, gait, new york times, cues, vulnerability, threshold, ears, biology, scientists, anime, love. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

28 Responses to “The “Cute” Factor”

  1. haneen says:

    this is the most adorable picture ive ever seen!!! it is soooooooooooooo cute!! they so small
    !!!! dawwww:D

  2. Michael says:

    no humans could acutally stack like that if you tried to then it would be extremely akward and also be regarded as an *** position

  3. diana says:

    aww that is so cute!

  4. emo says:

    Cool picture :)

  5. shizuka says:

    heh. these.. are from the anime kamichama karin if im not wrong. cant really rmb their names.. the middle is karin i think.. the top is suzune.. btm forgot XP

  6. lovley_baby says:

    oh my god they r soooo cute

  7. Glammie says:

    It’s sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo sooooooooooooooooooooooo cute man!

  8. shena says:

    super cute!

  9. JJay says:

    Have you guys read the definition of ‘cuteness’ at the top of this page? How dare they try to define such a beautiful thing! >-

  10. gopichand says:

    so cuteeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

  11. McKaela says:

    awww love it! dunno what anime tho

  12. JJay says:

    anyways… urg! beyond quizilla, what good websites are there for anime pics? id love to find other pics like this one. it is so cute!

  13. JJay says:

    Omigod, this is so kawaii! Does anybody have any idea what anime it’s from?

  14. Meena says:

    awe.. nice job. who r the three though? lol

  15. JoJo says:

    Aweee! That’s so cute! x3 Adorable! Nice job! ^-^
    I rate it 9/10. It’s really cute! :P

  16. lauren says:

    awwwwwwwwwww! soooooo cute! i just wanna pick ‘em up and huggle them!

  17. dannii says:

    awwwww that is the cutest pic ive eva seen! so adorable and so small it makes me want to join in haha XD

  18. vanessa says:

    SOOOOOOO CUTE!!!

  19. Meera says:

    my site is down right now, but is that Lee on the bottom sakura on top of him? can you tell me who the three are?

  20. cutie says:

    they are so cute and they rock lolzz

  21. Bego says:

    Totally cute

  22. Jessica says:

    This is so cute I love it!!! Where did you get that picture?

  23. Samantha says:

    it’s like in Pinky and the Brain!!!!

  24. angela says:

    omg dis is soooooooooooooooo cute just look at them such adorable little ppl ^.^

  25. engmin says:

    Cute!!!!! Where did you get that picture from?

  26. Yasamin says:

    You just want to eat em up since there so cute!

  27. teh xiu yi says:

    this picture is ao cute !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  28. Elliu says:

    That ‘dog pile’ pic is so adorable! ^^
    I wish you would make more.

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