Head Shape and the Perception ofCuteness

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Head Shape and the Perception of Cuteness Thomas R. Alley University of Connecticut The ethological hypothesis that the perception of cuteness can be \:lil:itcd by certain physical characteristics of infants was investigated in three experiments. A transformalion that modds the morphological change.s in heild :~Iwpc t..Iuring dcvelopmcnl was applied 10 one frontal and two prolilL: drawings llf human l1l~ads to create three series varying Dilly in global ceph~dlc :-.hapc. III ~lll three cXjll'rimcnLs. the rcspOllses of 25 subjects to lbese drawlIIgs indica\l:J that pcrcl'Ivl'd cuteness decreases as tbe shape the head chang.es dUl: to aging. 'Thesl' ,\lId olher ubservations arc discussed in terms an cthologil:al view of ,Hluli infant

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The young of many animal species display behavioral or physical characteristics that innuence parental behavior (Bell & Harper, 1977). It is well recognized that some behavioral patterns of human infants, such as smiling and crying, can elicit caregiving and affective responses from adults. In 1943, Konrad Lorenz soggested that some specific physical characteristics of inrants-including their predominant and protruding foreheads-may also elicit caregiving and a positive affective response wherein infants are seen as "cute." Sinee 1943 such a pattern of responses to visually perceived physical characteristics of infants has often been cited by ethologists (e.g., Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1975; He". 1975; Leyhausen, 1973; Morris, 1977; An carlier version of this article wa" presented at the 51s1 Annuall\1ccling of the Ea:;lern Psychological As-

sociation. Hartford, April 191;-:0. This research was pare lially supported by gru-nls from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation and the National Institute·

of D~ntal Research (Grant No. DE-l RO~DE049l}O-O[) to R. E. Shaw, arid by a prcdoctornl fellowship from the Univcrsi!y of Connecticut. 1 am grateful (0 Sam Weinstein for permitting me 10 usc his copy of lhe Deliver Child Research Council's longitudinal growth study. to .James Todd for his help ill preparing the stimuli. and 10 Kim Clark for hcr assistance in collecting the data. T. J. K:llikow kindly sent me a Iran5!ation of sections of lorenz's 1943 artide. Thanks arc due 10 Pamela Alley. Kalherine Hildebrandt. Lconard Mark. Benjamin Sachs. Robert SJww, and Michael Turvey [or helpful conmH:nl:; durillg the preparation of lhis urliele. Requests for reprints should be sent to Thomus R. Alley. Department of Psycholog.y, U~20, University of Connccticut. Storrs, Connecticut 06268.

Tinbergen, 1953; Wickler, 19731 and others (e.g" Ambrose, 1966; Hochb'"g. 1978) as an example of a universal or "'innate" human response. Nevertheless, only a few studies have provided evidence of the power jnfantile morphology to elicit positive affective or caretaking responses in adults, and several of these have utilized puor stimuli or faalty procedures (Alley, 1979). For example, one of the few studies of the relationship between facial feature configuration and cuteness

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confounded cuteness and attractiveness in the instructions to subjects (see Sternglanz,

Gray, & Murakami, 1977, p. 110). The only previous study that specifically focused on the relationship between cephalic morphology and cuteness reporled that postpubescent subjects will indeed select as culer the more infantile of pairs or cephalic profiles (including profiles or both humans and donkeys), but size was conl'uunded with shape in this study such that the more infantileshaped heads were also larger (see Huckstedt, 1965, Figures I and 2). The experiments of the present investigation are not intended to provide a decisive test of Lorenz's (1943) conjecture. NoneIheless, these experiments are' based on a hypothesis akin to that of Lorenz; namely, that an infantile head shape will tend to indUl:c a positive affective response in adults such lhat the he