
{"id":18156,"date":"2016-06-09T07:39:31","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T07:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/research\/babies-cuteness-an-evolutionary-mechanism-to-ensure-survival\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T11:51:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T06:21:14","slug":"babies-cuteness-an-evolutionary-mechanism-to-ensure-survival","status":"publish","type":"research","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/babies-cuteness-an-evolutionary-mechanism-to-ensure-survival","title":{"rendered":"Babies&#8217; cuteness: An evolutionary mechanism to ensure survival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Why are babies cute? A group of researchers at the University of Oxford have found the answer to this question. According to them, the appealing sight and smell of babies is a protective mechanism that ensures their survival at a time when they are completely dependent. Their cuteness attracts our senses and shapes our behavior i.e. we feel more inclined towards care-giving. Moreover, for the care givers, these altered brain responses ignite \u201cfundamental brain pleasure systems that are also engaged when eating food or listening to music, and always involve pleasant experiences.\u201d It was observed that cuteness affected people across gender and parental status.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Read more in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2016\/06\/160606115909.htm\">Science Daily<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":33313,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"new_tags":[],"series":[],"subject":[2874],"class_list":["post-18156","research","type-research","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","subject-psychology-and-neuroscience"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Babies&#039; cuteness: An evolutionary mechanism to ensure survival | Editage Insights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/babies-cuteness-an-evolutionary-mechanism-to-ensure-survival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Babies&#039; cuteness: An evolutionary mechanism to ensure survival | Editage Insights\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Why are babies cute? 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