Joshua Paul Dale

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42 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard Jan 2025

Joshua Paul Dale’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Something You Should Know · Why We Like Cute Things & How to Have a Great Conversation · 23 Jan 2025 podcast

Cuteness attracts our attention very quickly, within one seventh of a second. Then it acts as a releaser of social emotions like well-being and empathy and compassion and things like that.

Yeah, we call that the baby schema. And basically anything that reminds us of a baby. is going to appear cute to us. So you gave the example of puppies. They have big eyes as they're maturing. They have a kind of wide face. They have short little arms and legs. And these are the things that trigger a cuteness response in us, because we evolved to feel that babies are cute. We evolve to it?

It's evolution? Or is it just cultural? Oh yeah, that's a really good question and it seems to be a mix of both. So, scientists think that we evolved to feel cute because babies need to be taken care of and even more than that, they need socialization. They need us to engage with them so that they can learn to be part of human society.

And that response was so robust because it's so needed in our evolution as a species that it kind of spills over into anything that looks like a baby, like puppies or kittens.

Yes. This is the question that companies are always trying to figure out when they design cute products. And the threshold is different for individuals. So we can never know for sure. Otherwise, you know, I can make a million dollars right now just by designing the perfect cute product.

So basically it has to have some of the characteristics of the baby schema, but more important I think is the relationship that we can feel with the cute object. So if we can feel some kind of connection and there's a few cute characteristics, then we're going to be overwhelmed by that feeling of cuteness.

Well, studies have shown some really interesting results about that. Cuteness can basically induce positive emotional states because it gets our brain ready for behaviors like caretaking and also socialization. So when we see something cute, first of all, it makes us feel good. It increases our sense of well-being.

It also triggers activity in the muscles used for smiling, even if we're not aware of it. Scientists have put sensors on people's faces and the muscles are activated for smiling when we see something cute. And also, seeing something cute promotes social relationships, like it increases our empathy, and it even focuses our attention more.

Yeah, cute can be a synonym for very similar words like pretty or adorable, which is very close to cute. And there's also an element of the word cute in English that is not in the word in other languages. Cute in English can imply something that's a little bit clever or cunning. Like you can say, oh, don't be cute to someone, for example, and you're not talking about adorability there.

You're saying don't be so clever. In other languages, like in Japanese, the word for cute is kawaii, and it does not have that kind of meaning. You cannot say don't be kawaii in the way that you can say don't be cute in English. That's what I find so interesting about this phenomenon.

I think it depends on our own situation. So some people are more attracted to cute things than others. And there's interesting research going on right now about AI assistants, which are coming fast. And so the scientists are wondering, will people like an assistant that sounds cute or one that sounds more professional? And it really depends on the situation.

If you're asking for help with a technical issue, you want professionality. But there are other cases where if a voice, artificial voice, sounds kind of cute, that you might forgive its mistakes a little bit more easily, for example. And companies are very aware that that can be a big advantage to them.

Yeah, there's a phenomenon they call auditory cuteness that's also being investigated. And so far, the research has really concentrated on voices that are sort of a little bit more higher-pitched, There are actually robots available that create sounds, they don't talk, through a cavity in their bodies that is the same size as a baby's voice box.

So in general, if a voice sounds like a little bit higher pitch and also a little bit maybe a little bit funny or laughing a little bit, then we're more likely to imagine that a relationship with that voice and go along with it.

Well, we will feel that animals are cute if they have the baby schema characteristics and also if they're in their, what we call the socialization period. Young animals, including predators like bears or wolves, in their first few weeks of life, they are very curious and they explore everything and they have a lot of energy.

Those are the characteristics that human children have too, and these will help trigger our cuteness response. But of course with wild animals, once the socialization window closes, then they become more cautious and can become aggressive as well.

Well, that's part of it. I mean, my typical answer to the question of why do I study Qt is that it's a multi-billion dollar industry operating around the world and very few people are studying it. But more than that, I mean, you're right to guess that I have more of an interest. And my interest really lies in just how...

deep it goes, and how many ways you can study it from so many different positions. You can study the science of cuteness, the psychology of cuteness, from marketing, sure, but also from a cultural standpoint. What do we find cute and why, and how is this different across individuals and cultures? It just seems like I'll never get to the bottom of it, and that's what attracts me.

Yeah, in Western culture, like European history, there has not been so much cuteness in arts and literature, you know, where we can track it. until possibly the Renaissance when cupids appeared in artworks. So there are many frescoes and paintings from the Renaissance with little winged cupids flying around that look like babies. In Japan, it's different.

Cuteness has been a presence in the arts in Japan for at least a thousand years in art and literature. And that difference is also something that I'm really interested in exploring. Why do you think it's so popular in Japanese culture for so long? One reason is that in Europe, the aesthetics that guided art were the beautiful and the sublime.

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