Cuteness Steinberg

In the article “The New Science of Cute” written by Neil Steinberg of The Guardian, Steinberg elaborates on the subjectivity of cuteness and how the concept of cuteness has developed over period of time. In the article, Steinberg incorporates scientific facts, historical data, and real-life examples to expand on how and the reason behind the public’s reaction to cuteness and how cuteness is used in the commerce.
To begin with, Steinberg states about the cultish popularity of Kumamon – Yuru-Kyara that represents the prefecture of Kumamoto – and how goods related to Kumamon is being sold in the market. According to Steinberg, when earthquake hit Kumamoto, Japan, multiple people missed Kumamon and wrote words of encouragement on social media.
Steinberg says that from 21th century, when the concept of cuteness raised as a field of attention, various experiments exhibited that observation of cute items boost focus and motor skills. One experiment, according to Steinberg, illustrated that watching cute objects trigger the brain to release Dopamine – a chemical that is used to make our brain accurately function. In a 2012 study done by the University of Michigan, Sookyung Cho, a visual information expert, suggested that factors like smallness, roundness, tiltedness, and lightness of color enabled an object to be cute. Furthermore, after finding that the result of the experiment done by people from various countries differs from each other, Cho found that the idea cuteness is affected by culture. In addition to being enthralled by cuteness, Steinberg states, cuteness can be a field of academic study. Steinberg cites Joshua Paul Dale and Hiroshi Nittono, whom both contributed to the East Asian Journal’s special issue about cuteness. Dale states that even though the study is fairly novel, it has many connections with existing studies. Nittono articulates that cuteness promotes socialization because cuteness prompts interest from different