Being Old and “Cute” May Be Just What the Doctor Ordered

In the past couple years, I have noticed a word sometimes applied to me that was last used with any frequency when I was about four.  That word is “cute.”  When I hold my wife’s hand as we take a walk, my grandchildren say how “cute” we look, the same word they use when we dance at a wedding.  We’ve always held hands – and danced – but we haven’t always heard that we’re “cute” when we do so.  I don’t mind of course; actually it’s sweet and a sign of love, but it did get me thinking.  Why are we being called cute just now?

We’re not alone, by any means.  I now notice that a lot of older people are called cute.  One may have told an old story, with a sparkle in her eye.  Another may have managed to do something no one thought he could do any more, like ride a roller coaster.   Or older people may have just been able to swing on a swing, with a smile and the grin of, yep, a four-year-old. 

There is no cosmic significance to this, of course - perhaps no significance whatsoever.  But, as one thought leads to another, I searched for the origins and impact of “cute,” at least as applied this way.

Cuteness, it turns out, has evolutionary benefits, according to research done on babies.  Since human babies cannot take care of themselves, they require several years of nurturing.  The fact they they’re so cute helps them get it.  Cuteness, as revealed in brain imaging, creates very fast (one seventh of a second) activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, which is linked to emotion and pleasure.  That fast triggering is then followed by slower brain responses involved in caregiving and bonding.   Ethologist Konrad Lorenz first argued in the 1940s that infantile features (e.g. proportionally large eyes, a small nose, small ears and a high forehead) stimulate nurturing, a fact brain research now bears out.  Indeed, the nurturing response seems to occur even in adults (men as well as women) unrelated to a particular infant.  This expands the moral sensitivity of adults, to the advantage of all young humans.

Nurturing behavior, unlike the immediate reaction to cuteness, has to be learned so cuteness stimulates the desire to figure out how to care for those vulnerable babies.  Cuteness also leads caregivers to smile, laugh, and do other things that continue social interaction, which is crucial to a child’s social and mental as well as physical development.

So what’s this got to do with elders?  Here’s another piece of intriguing science.  The brain’s cuteness reaction extends to the young of other species (think about lambs, puppies, kittens) and not just to babies.  Even inanimate objects can be called cute, like teddy bears – which, by the way, have been continually redesigned over the years and now have those infantile features that spark adults to see them as cute.  Cuteness also stimulates kama muta, a Sanskrit word meaning an intense feeling of community with others.  Kama muta is associated with prosocial behavior, such as empathy, helping and sharing.  Research even demonstrates that people exposed to cute stimuli perform better and make fewer errors on tasks that require focus and carefulness. 

If there is another group in addition to babies that is very vulnerable and relies on others who are nurturing, socially interactive and careful, that might be aging adults.  Some will get it from family, but many others will end up in assisted living and nursing care.  There, they will need that kind of care from those with no kinship relation to them.  There is even evidence that those who work as caregivers in institutions and are exposed to cute images find the positive emotions generated help them make it through stressful days.

So, the fact we older folks are once again sometimes “cute” may be a way of stimulating the support and caring we need as we age.   I’m not conscious of this; I wouldn’t know how to act cute if I tried.   But if others see us this way from time to time, we should be thankful.  It’s likely to be more helpful to us and pleasant to others than appearing unhappy, cynical and ungrateful - words sometimes associated with us as we age.  When I was born, I suspect I created a twinkle in my parents’ eyes.  As l reach the other end of life’s journey, perhaps I can put a twinkle in the eyes of others.  That kind of symmetry is, well, sort of cute.

Photo Credit: Carol Donsky Newell