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Leafy comments on Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych - Less Wrong
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Is it not worth considering "cuteness" to be defined in terms of threat levels. It seems to me that in most cases there is a direct correlation between cuteness and perceived threat.
By threat I am referring not just to physical (claws versus soft paws, large vs small, dominant versus meek, hard versus soft) but even biological (messy / unhygenic looking creatures versus fluffy / cuddly looking ones) or social (flawed versus flawless).
This may explain why some people perceive cuteness differently. One person may look at a human baby and see no possible threat, others may be more inclined to be considering health implications or even the threat of embaressment / fear it is associated with.
With this association in mind it would seem that selection towards lower threat is prevalent - babies looking cute leads to lower abandonment or attack by other parties, animals allowed to come close to humans without fear and benefiting from shelter / food / care etc.
This also might explain why some of us think that babies are cute, and others of us don't: Not that babies themselves are potentially dangerous, but that messing with someone else's baby is potentially dangerous, particularly if the baby belongs to someone who's not a tribemate. I suspect that finding a given baby cute correlates with how much we trust the baby's parents; in the case of strangers' babies, it would correlate with our priors regarding how dangerous it is to interact with strangers.
This doesn't explain why some stranger's babies register as cuter than others, though - perhaps that correlates with how much the babies look like people who we believe would trust us to interact with their babies?
Baby cats and dogs also might not be dangerous, but might be dangerous to mess with as well.
If more trustworthy strangers have cuter babies, does this mean that all animals are more trustworthy than people?
Of course - there are no evil cats plotting to take over the world.
Do people who consider adult cats and dogs dangerous find kittens and puppies cute? I've only known a few people in the former categories, but those people didn't.
Cats are dangerous predators and many housecats scratch or bite humans in play, but they're still cute, often in the very moment of doing so. They can also appear cute when hunting real prey.
Cats that are actually dangerous to us are generally not perceived as cute, though. Googling 'cute lion', for example, turns up primarily cubs, drawings of cubs, drawings of adults with cublike proportions (which look decidedly nonthreatening), or babies or pets dressed up to look like lions. The only picture of an actual adult lion on the first 5 pages that registers as even remotely cute is this one, and that stops registering as cute at all when I consider the chance that that lion could have mauled her.
I see this as saying that fear masks cuteness.
It makes sense that immediate physical fear overrides cuteness-attraction. But if fear is banished, the same animals - even adult felines - appear cute (to me, at least). For instance, if I had a bionic body that a lion couldn't maul, I strongly believe I'd find that lion kiss picture very cute and would very much want to play with big cats.
That's how I parsed the original comment's 'threat levels' - it's not that we're hardwired to see certain things as nonthreatening and thus cute; the perception of threat is learned or situational, and cuteness is the opposite perception, and thus also learned or situational.
(I'd want to play with big cats in that situation, too. Have you seen the videos of the guy who does? They're adorable.)
It can't just be harmlessness-- all sorts of things (like pencils) are harmless but not cute.
Possibly I want to limit my hypothesis to life-forms, thank you for the feedback.
There are cute inanimate objects. Tiny ones. I have adorable polyhedral dice, which I acquired by squealing over them so much that their prior owner thought I should just keep them.
Ah, finally we have a hypothesis on the benefits to humans of the general cuteness instinct!
I have acquired multiple possessions by expressing sincere admiration of them; cuteness was only a factor of said admiration in the one case.
You can kill someone with a pencil.
But the pencil can't kill someone on its own. The fear attaches to the pencil-wielder, who after all can also kill someone with their bare hands.
The cute=harmless hypothesis would predict that writing utensils of equal size that are more difficult to kill or harm with, say a brush or a crayon, are cuter. And also that soap bubbles are cuter than most other lifeless objects.
I'm sure you could contrive a way to kill someone with a bunny.
Contrived ways for bunnies to kill themselves:
http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/Bunny_Suicide_Comic_Pics_226_2007.php
Certainly. I can imagine several contrived ways how to use a bunny as a weapon, while I don't know how to kill someone with a soap bubble. Still, bunny is cuter.
Fill the soap bubble with a toxic gas.