为了解开此现象是否可以在大脑活动中被测量之疑团，加州大学河滨分校(University of California，Riverside)的心理学家凯瑟琳·斯塔夫罗普洛斯(Katherine Stavropoulos)进行了一项特别的研究。该研究团队为54名参与测试者安装了电极帽来测量大脑活动，并向他们展示了32张成年和幼年动物的照片。根据研究人员的说法，婴儿动物的图像得到了最强的反应，参与者对婴儿动物的攻击性比成年动物更可爱。研究还发现，可爱的攻击程度与大脑对萌物的奖励反应之间存在很强的联系。

萌萌的微笑  摄影：傅婷

正如斯塔夫罗普洛斯所总结的那样，萌物攻击性似乎是大脑通过抑制我们占据主导性地位(压倒性)的感觉来“使得我们退缩”的方式。当这两个强大的系统——情绪和奖励——启动时，大脑会通过增加一点攻击性来调和大量的积极情绪。研究人员认为，随着时光的推移，攻击性反应或许在我们物种的生存和适应中发挥了作用，助我们调节情绪并强化社会互信关系。

  萌萌的少儿  摄影：毛子泰

附：英文原文

When we see cute babies, puppies, or other adorable things, it isn’t uncommon to feel a strong urge to pinch or even bite them. It turns out there’s a scientific term for this response: “cute aggression”.

In 2015, Yale University researchers published a study about human responses to cuteness, which are often both positive and negative. The researchers concluded that reactions to cuteness — ranging from smiles to tears to aggression — are brought on by the degree of positive emotion. Cute aggression doesn’t appear to be driven by aggressive intention. Instead, scientists think it is a way for us to cope with intense positive emotions.“Cute aggression seems to be a mechanism to manage the overwhelming positive feelings we get when we interact with something too cute for us to handle,” says Associate Professor Lisa A. Williams, a social psychologist from UNSW Science. It is like a pressure valve that helps us release the excess of positive emotions before they explode like a balloon. “In other words, to balance out the overwhelming flood of positive feelings, we seek to hold it back — and strangely enough, that can play out as an aggressive inclination.”

Wondering whether this phenomenon could be measured in brain activity, Katherine Stavropoulos, a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside, conducted a study. The team fitted 54 participants with electrode caps to measure brain activity and showed them 32 photographs of adult and baby animals. According to the researchers, the images of baby animals received the strongest response, and participants expressed more cute aggression toward baby animals than adult animals. Stavropoulos also found strong connections between the degree of cute aggression and the brain’s reward response to adorable animals.

As Stavropoulos concluded, cute aggression seems to be the brain’s way of “bringing us back down” by suppressing our overwhelming feelings. When these two powerful systems are started — emotion and reward — the brain adjusts to the flood of positive feelings by adding a little aggression. Researchers believe that aggressive responses may have played a role in the survival and adaptation of our species over time, helping us regulate emotions and strengthen social bonds.