Cross-Cultural Comparisons of the Cute and Related Concepts in Japan, the United States, and Israel

Nittono, Hiroshi; Lieber-Milo, Shiri; Dale, Joshua

doi:10.1177/2158244020988730

Cited by 21 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…About half of Americans were familiar with the word “kawaii” and considered it to have positive connotations. A similar result was obtained in a previous survey conducted in May (2019) (Nittono et al, 2021), where 41.5% of Americans (298 out of 718) responded that they were familiar with the word and thought it had positive connotations ( M = 4.01, SD = 0.80, calculated from the dataset available at https://osf.io/hjgwv/). In a survey conducted in Israel during August and September 2018 (Lieber-Milo & Nittono, 2019b), the recognition rate was 85.6% (381 out of 445), and the impression was also positive ( M = 3.99, SD = 0.84) among those who answered ( n = 373).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…In recent years, interest in studying the concepts of cuteness and kawaii have increased not only in Japan but also in other Asian and Western countries (Dale et al, 2017;May, 2019). A recent survey showing that ''cute'' and related concepts are equally liked and considered to be positive has been conducted in Japan, the United States, and Israel (Nittono et al, 2021). Research on cuteness and kawaii has been conducted in various fields, including the arts and humanities (Dale et al, 2017;May, 2019;Ngai, 2012), psychology (A ´lvarez-San Milla´n et al, 2022;Arago´n et al, 2015;Nittono et al, 2012;Sherman & Haidt, 2011), neuroscience (Hahn & Perrett, 2014;Kringelbach et al, 2016), marketing (Nenkov & Scott, 2014;Shin & Mattila, 2021;Wang et al, 2017), and engineering (Marcus et al, 2017;Ohkura, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

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English and Spanish Adjectives That Describe the Japanese Concept of Kawaii

et al. 2023

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The word “kawaii” is ubiquitous in contemporary Japan and has spread to the rest of the world with the dissemination of Japanese pop culture. Although the word is conventionally translated in English as “cute,” its meaning is more nuanced than “cute,” and it is used for a wider variety of objects. The primary aim of this study was to determine if Spanish has an equivalent to the word “kawaii”; additionally, similarities and differences across Japanese, English, and Spanish were explored. An internet survey was conducted in which respondents from Japan ( n = 486), the United States ( n = 365), and Argentina ( n = 303) were presented with various photographic images that were often described as “kawaii” in Japanese and asked to write three adjectives to describe the images. They were also instructed to rate their affective states when looking at each image in the valence and arousal dimensions. The results showed that babyish objects (e.g., human, animal, and toy) were most frequently defined as “kawaii” in Japanese, “cute” in English, and “tierno” in Spanish. The average frequency at which these words were used as primary adjectives was higher for “kawaii” (57.5%) than for “cute” (26.8%) or “tierno” (22.4%). All of these images were associated with positive and moderately-aroused affective states similarly across all three countries. The present study demonstrates that the adjectives “kawaii,” “cute,” and “tierno” can be used almost equivalently for describing babies and pets, but that the Japanese adjective “kawaii” encompasses wider categories than the other two words.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

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confidence: 99%

English and Spanish Adjectives That Describe the Japanese Concept of Kawaii

et al. 2023

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“…Research has shown sex/gender and age differences in interest in and attitude toward infants and cuteness (Robinson et al, 1979;Berman, 1980;Maestripieri and Pelka, 2002;Nishiyama et al, 2015). A recent cross-cultural study showed that young women had more positive attitudes toward cute things (not restricted to infants) than men, and this tendency decreased with age, which was similar in Japan, the United States, and Israel (Nittono et al, 2021). However, the present study did not show any evidence for young women having superior performance than other groups in cuteness perception.…”

Section: Sex and Age Effectsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Creation and Validation of the Japanese Cute Infant Face (JCIF) Dataset

2022

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Research interest in cuteness perception and its effects on subsequent behavior and physiological responses has recently been increasing. The purpose of the present study was to produce a dataset of Japanese infant faces that are free of portrait rights and can be used for cuteness research. A total of 80 original facial images of 6-month-old infants were collected from their parents. The cuteness level of each picture was rated on a 7-point scale by 200 Japanese people (100 men and 100 women in their 20s–60s). Prototypical high- and low-cuteness faces were created by averaging the top 10 and bottom 10 faces according to the mean cuteness ratings. Then, 50 composite faces were made by mixing two faces randomly chosen from the 60 unused middle-cuteness faces. The normative cuteness ratings of these composite faces were obtained from 229 Japanese men and women in their 20s–60s. The shape of each composite face was transformed to be cuter (+50%) or less cute (–50%) along a continuum between the high- and low-cuteness prototypical faces. A two-alternative forced-choice task (N = 587) confirmed that cuteness discrimination was better than the chance level for all 50 face pairs. Moreover, the results showed that young men had poorer sensitivity to cuteness differences in infant faces than older men and women of any age. This Japanese Cute Infant Face (JCIF, “jay-sif”) dataset, including composite face images and normative rating scores, is publicly available online.

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“…The perception of cuteness is generally universal across cultures (Nittono et al, 2021); however, there are differences in the way the concept itself has originated and might be understood. In English, the meaning of "cute" (a shortened form of "acute") has evolved from the original "shrewd, " "clever" or "quick-witted" in the 18th and 19th centuries, to a more esthetic "attractive" or "charming" as well as being associated with small size in the 20th century (Halperin, 2012;Waldman, 2015).…”

Section: Cuteness As a Universal Constructmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They serve as stimuli to evoke different physiological, behavioral, and emotional reactions in people who experience them (Glocker et al, 2009a(Glocker et al, , 2009bKringelbach et al, 2016;Steinnes et al, 2019). Understanding what attributes make an entity cute, what emotion cuteness evokes, as well as how to objectively measure those attributes and emotions are all important, because cuteness can influence people, and challenging, because perception of cuteness is commonly based on a subjective judgment (though there is agreement on some common characteristics of cuteness, see Nittono et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The construct of cuteness: A validity study for measuring content and evoked emotions on social media

Golonka

Jones²,

Sheehan³

et al. 2023

Front. Psychol.

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Social media users are often exposed to cute content that evokes emotional reactions and influences them to feel or behave certain ways. The cuteness phenomenon in social media has been scarcely studied despite its prevalence and potential to spread quickly and affect large audiences. The main framework for understanding cuteness and emotions related to cuteness outside of social media is baby schema (having juvenile characteristics), which triggers parental instincts. We propose that baby schema is a necessary but not sufficient component of explaining what constitutes cuteness and how people react to it in the social media context. Cute social media content may also have characteristics that evoke approach motivations (a desire to interact with an entity, generally with the expectation of having a positive experience) that can manifest behaviorally in sharing and other prosocial online behaviors. We developed and performed initial validation for measures in social media contexts of: (1) cute attributes that encompass both baby schema and other proposed cuteness characteristics (the Cuteness Attributes Taxonomy, CAT) and (2) the emotional reactions they trigger (Heartwarming Social Media, HSM). We used the Kama Muta Multiplex Scale (KAMMUS Two), as previously validated measure of kama muta (an emotion akin to tenderness; from Sanskrit, “moved by love”) as a measure of emotional reaction to cute stimuli and the dimension Cute Content of the Social Media Emotions Annotation Guide (SMEmo-Cute Content) as a developed measure of gestalt cute content to help validate our newly developed measures. Using 1,875 Polish tweets, our results confirmed that cute social media content predicted a kama muta response, but not all KAMMUS Two subscales were sensitive to cute content, and that the HSM measure was a better indicator of the presence of cute content. Further, the CAT measure is an effective means of categorizing cute attributes of social media content. These results suggest potential differences between in-person, online, and social media experiences evoking cute emotional reactions, and the need for metrics that are developed and validated for use in social media contexts.

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Cross-Cultural Comparisons of the Cute and Related Concepts in Japan, the United States, and Israel

Cited by 21 publications

References 50 publications

English and Spanish Adjectives That Describe the Japanese Concept of Kawaii

English and Spanish Adjectives That Describe the Japanese Concept of Kawaii

Creation and Validation of the Japanese Cute Infant Face (JCIF) Dataset

The construct of cuteness: A validity study for measuring content and evoked emotions on social media

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