SQUISH CHEEKS MOVIE

The images included both grown-ups and babies. So she and a colleague recorded the electrical activity in the brains of 54 young adults as they looked at images of animals and people. I just want to eat it.'Д¬ute aggression was first described by researchers at Yale University several years ago.Д«ut Stavropoulos, a cute aggressor herself, wanted to know what it looked like in the brain. Stavropoulos says they think, 'This is weird I'm probably the only one who feels this way. The thoughts appear to be an involuntary response to being overwhelmed by a positive emotion.Д¬ute aggression is often baffling and embarrassing to the people who experience it. 'When people feel this way, it's with no desire to cause harm,' Stavropoulos says.

But those people wouldn't really take a swipe at Bambi or Thumper, she says. People 'just have this flash of thinking: 'I want to crush it' or 'I want to squeeze it until pops' or 'I want to punch it,' ' says Katherine Stavropoulos, a psychologist in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside.ДЄbout half of all adults have those thoughts sometimes, says Stavropoulos, who published a study about the phenomenon in early December in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. You've got those ads with adorable children and those movies about baby animals with big eyes.Д«ut when people encounter too much cuteness, the result can be something scientists call 'cute aggression.'

SQUISH CHEEKS MOVIE

Researchers say human brains can become overwhelmed by cute traits, such as large eyes and small noses, embodied by movie characters like Bambi.Дisney Junior/Disney Channel via Getty Images

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