Under the Gigil Spell

           
If you're squealing in your seat, wanting to simply snatch these cute animals and squeeze them, you're not alone.

From statements like "I just wanna eat you up!" or "I can't handle it," the words we express when seeing something cute reveals a dark side to our infatuation with cute. In fact, this "cute aggression" as one researcher puts it, is quite normal and instead exposes an innate response.  And in the Philippines, they even have a word for it:

gigil n. the urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute. 

Yet, this aggression, as clarified by Society for Personality and Social Psychology, doesn't imply any harm.

The bigger question becomes, "Why is it that the language and motions that we use to react to cute pictures, animals, etc. are so violent?"

Paradoxically, our brains function in a way that rather than approaching something cute and cuddly with gentleness and care, our brain turns it into aggression. Intrigued by the correlation of cuteness and verbal & physical aggression, researchers split up the experiment into two. The first experiment consisted of 109 participants rating pictures by how much they felt the pictures made them lose control. This was measured specifically through the verbal reactions to each picture. Whereas the second experiment focused on the connection of verbal aggression and physical aggression, by gathering 90 male and female volunteers who were given bubble wrap. The researchers found that the participants watching the cute slideshow of animals popped more than 120 bubbles, as compared to 80 for those watching a funny slideshow, and 100 for those watching a neutral slideshow.

While the correlation between the "aggression" in our words and cuteness has been established, according to Popular Science, the causation is still in the works. However, Dyer offers two possibilities: the overwhelming positive emotions are expressed negatively in an attempt to control ourselves. It's a bit like crying at truly happy events. Or, it's because the overwhelming positive emotion stirs in us a desire to take care of it, but because it's a picture, frustration turns into aggression.

Whatever the reason, let's just say, we have a little bit of Steinbeck's Lennie Small in all of us. However, not to worry, as Dyer of Yale puts it, "We don't have a bunch of budding sociopaths in our studies that you have to worry about".