爱思英语编者按：有没有一看到萌犬或是可爱的北鼻就有一种景涛附身般想吼一句“快到碗里来！”的赶脚呢？或者你也不知道为什么就是想戳戳你亲孙子粉嘟嘟的小脸蛋呢？你不是一个人在战斗！最新研究发现面对萌物表面上毫无理由便飙升的攻击值其实十分正常。

'I Wanna Eat You Up!' Why We Go Crazy for Cute

NEW ORLEANS — Ever reacted to the sight of a cute puppy or darling infant by squealing, "I want to eat you up!"? Or maybe you can't help but want to pinch your grandbaby's adorable cheeks. You're not alone. New research finds that seemingly strange aggressive responses to cuteness are actually the norm.

In fact, people not only verbalize these aggressive desires with phrases like, "I just want to squeeze something!" they also really do act them out. In the study, presented Friday (Jan. 18) here at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, researchers found that people watching a slideshow of adorable pictures popped more bubbles on a sheet of bubble wrap than did people viewing funny or neutral pictures.

"We think it's about high positive-affect, an approach orientation and almost a sense of lost control," said study researcher Rebecca Dyer, a graduate student in psychology at Yale University. "You know, you can't stand it, you can't handle it, that kind of thing."

Too cute

Dyer got interested in what she and her colleagues call "cute aggression" after chatting with a fellow student about how adorable Internet pictures often produce the desire to squish or squeeze the cute critter. All the existing research on cuteness suggests the reaction should be the opposite, she told LiveScience. People should want to treat a cute thing with gentleness and care. [Gallery: World's Cutest Baby Wild Animals]

And indeed, Dyer said, it's not as though people really want to hurt a basketful of kittens when they see the furballs tumbling all over one another. 

"We don't have a bunch of budding sociopaths in our studies that you have to worry about," she said.

But something odd seemed to be going on. So Dyer and her co-author, fellow Yale graduate student Oriana Aragon, first ran an experiment to see if cuteness aggression was a real phenomenon. They recruited 109 participants online to look at pictures of cute, funny or neutral animals. A cute animal might be a fluffy puppy, while a funny animal could be a dog with its head out a car window, jowls flapping. A neutral animal might be an older dog with a serious expression.

The participants rated the pictures on cuteness and funniness, as well as on how much they felt the pictures made them lose control — for example, if they agreed with statements such as "I can't handle it!" The participants also rated the extent to which the pictures made them "want to say something like 'grr!'" and "want to squeeze something."

Sure enough, the cuter the animal, the less control and more desire to "grrr" and squeeze something that people felt. Cute animals produced this feeling significantly more strongly than did funny animals. The funny critters in turn produced the feeling more strongly than did neutral animals, perhaps because the funny animals were perceived as cute, too, Dyer said.

Dealing with adorable

Still, those results could have merely identified a verbal expression for cuteness, rather than a real feeling. So Dyer and her colleagues asked 90 male and female volunteers to come into a psychology laboratory and view a slideshow of cute, funny and neutral animals.

Researchers told the participants that this was a study of motor activity and memory, and then gave the subjects sheets of bubble wrap. The participants were instructed to pop as many or as few bubbles as they wanted, just as long as they were doing something involving motion.

In fact, the researchers really wanted to know if people would respond to cute animals with an outward display of aggression, popping more bubbles, compared with people looking at neutral or funny animals.

That's exactly what happened. The people watching a cute slideshow popped 120 bubbles, on average, compared with 80 for the funny slideshow and just a hair over 100 for the neutral one.

Dyer said she and her colleagues aren't yet sure why cuteness seems to trigger expressions of aggression, even relatively harmless ones. It's possible that seeing a wide-eyed baby or roly-poly pup triggers our drive to care for that creature, Dyer said. But since the animal is just a picture, and since even in real life we might not be able to care for the creature as much as we want, this urge may be frustrated, she said. That frustration could lead to aggression. [10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain]

Alternatively, people could be trying so hard not to hurt the animal that they actually do so, much as a child wanting to care for a cat might squeeze it too tightly (and get scratched for the effort).

Or the reason might not be specific to cuteness, Dyer said. Many overwhelmingly positive emotions look negative, as when Miss America sobs while receiving her crown. Such high levels of positive emotion may overwhelm people.

"It might be that how we deal with high positive-emotion is to sort of give it a negative pitch somehow, Dyer said. "That sort of regulates, keeps us level and releases that energy."

“快到碗里来！”为什么我们一见萌物就hold不住

译者：蛋黄酱立里

有没有一看到萌犬或是可爱的北鼻就有一种景涛附身般想吼一句“快到碗里来！”的赶脚呢？或者你也不知道为什么就是想戳戳你亲孙子粉嘟嘟的小脸蛋呢？你不是一个人在战斗！最新研究发现面对萌物表面上毫无理由便飙升的攻击值其实十分正常。

事实上，地球人不仅愿意把内心的残暴心理用简单粗暴的语言，比方说“我就想捏点啥！”，表达出来，还特热衷于付诸实践。在研究中，在周五呈现的个性与社会心理研究年会上，研究人员发现，人们在观看萌物系ppt的时候要比观看2B系或正常系捏破包装纸上的泡泡数更多。

“我们认为这是一种正能量的影响，一种想要接近的表示，甚至于一种失控力”，研究学者丽贝卡·黛儿（Rebecca Dyer）表示，她是耶鲁大学心理专业的研究生。“你懂的，你觉得受不了，欲罢不能，就是那种赶脚。”

好萌

黛儿与一位同学闲聊人们经常想对萌萌的小东西捏捏掐掐后，对她和她同事所谓的“激萌”产生了深厚的兴趣。目前所有的研究得出的都是相反的结论，她告诉趣味科学网（LiveScience）。人们正常来讲应该以温柔和爱护对待可爱的小动物的。

而事实上，黛儿表示，人们看到像毛球一样相互滚来滚去的小猫崽儿时，也不是真想去伤害这一篮子萌物。

“你也不用担心我们研究会有什么冉冉升起的暴力新猩，”她说。

但奇怪的事也不是没有。于是黛儿和她的合著者，同样是耶鲁大学研究生的奥丽埃纳·阿拉贡（Oriana Aragon），就先做了个实验看看“激萌”到底是不是笔上谈兵。她们在网上找来了109个研究对象，让他们看萌系，二系和普通系动物的照片。萌系动物可以是个毛茸茸的汪星人，二系动物可能是个把脑袋伸出车窗的小哈的随风鼓动的下巴颏。正常系的呢可能就是有一只严肃的老狗的图片。

研究对象按萌属性和二属性给图片打分，还要形容出他们对图片的失控程度——比方说，如果他们同意对这幅图让他们感到“我受不鸟啦”。同样地，研究对象按这幅图有多想让你“想发出‘额呜！’”和“想捏东西”也进行了打分。

必然的是，动物越可爱，人们就越容易失控，就越想低吟一声“额呜”，就越想捏点什么。萌物比二货动物更容易让人产生这种感觉。而二货动物在这方面又比普通动物略胜一筹，可能是因为人们觉得二二的动物也挺有爱的，黛儿解释道。

抗萌

尽管如此，这些研究结果只能证明人们对萌物有一种言语表达的倾向，而不能证明真实情感。于是黛儿和她的同事邀请了90名志愿者参与一个心理实验室，并观看萌系动物，二货动物，正常动物的组图。

研究人员告知研究对象这是一个有关肌肉活动与记忆能力的研究，然后把泡泡包装纸发给研究对象。这些人也被告知可以按自己意愿捏破任意多个泡泡，只要他们是在动就行。

实际上，研究人员真正的目的是想了解，与对二货动物和正常动物相比，人们是否会对萌物产生一种直接外向的攻击性，也就是捏爆更多泡泡。

而事实就是这样。看萌物组图的人们平均捏破120个泡泡，看搞笑系的平均捏破80个，而看正常系的差不多平均捏破的泡泡数量则为100出头。

黛儿表示她和她的同事还没搞清楚为什么萌属性，甚至是相对来讲无害的小东西们，会引发有暴力特征的行为。可能是看到一个闪烁着大眼睛的北鼻或者是圆滚滚的小汪星人会激发我们对这种生物的爱护，黛儿说道。但因为这个动物只是一张图片，并且在现实生活中，即使我们想，可能也没机会照看这样一只萌物，于是挫败感油然而生。这种挫败感则可能导致强烈的攻击性。

或者说，人们其实是在刻意控制自己不去伤害小动物以至于他们伤害了这些小动物，就好像一个孩子想轻抚小猫但未曾想抓得太紧了（有可能还为此被猫挠了一下）。

也有可能，原因不光在于萌属性，黛儿说道。许多泛滥的正能量可能看起来是消极的，就像当美国小姐接受加冕时却哽咽了一样。人们可能会被过高的积极情绪所湮没。

“可能是因为我们处理正能量的方式使其变了味，”黛儿解释道。“而这刚好做了下调节，让我们保持情绪上的平衡并且释放富余能量。”