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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff

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Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbaumb here with another classic from the vault. If

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Speaker 1: you're listening as this episode comes out, we are officially

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Speaker 1: in spooky season, though I think spooky season lives in

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Speaker 1: your heart year round. So today I wanted to revisit

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Speaker 1: a fun one about the psychology behind all of those

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Speaker 1: pop culture instances of monsters made adorable. Welcome to brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogelbaumb Here.

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Speaker 1: If you can think of a terrifying monster from popular culture,

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Speaker 1: I can show you a version of that monster designed

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Speaker 1: to be cute. From Freddy Krueger and Godzilla to Cthulhu

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Speaker 1: and Pennywise the Dancing Clown. We seem determined to transform

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Speaker 1: our monsters into plushies, cartoon characters, and other cuties. But

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Speaker 1: why let's take a second to discuss what monsters and

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Speaker 1: cuties actually are. You can go down the rabbit hole

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Speaker 1: on the cognitive origin of monsters, but essentially, a monster

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Speaker 1: is an unreal creature that's awesome in size or novel

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Speaker 1: in its chimerical combination of natural forms. It threatens and

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Speaker 1: terrifies us even as it relates some lesson or understanding

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Speaker 1: of the world around us. For instance, a werewolf combines

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Speaker 1: human and lupine characteristics, but also relays a message about

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Speaker 1: the dual nature of human beings. We are both beast

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Speaker 1: and something that aspires to be more. Acuteness is easier

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Speaker 1: to nail down, if only because it's so rooted in

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Speaker 1: conditioned responses to human infants. The features that we call

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Speaker 1: cute in babies, big eyes, fat cheeks are simply the

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Speaker 1: ones that hijack human attention and response. After all, the

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Speaker 1: infant is the fruit of our genetic programming. We can't

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Speaker 1: help but attend to its needs. This view of cuteness

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Speaker 1: falls in line with Charles Darwin's theory that natural selection

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Speaker 1: favors creatures that, in infancy possess features that cause adults

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Speaker 1: to protect them. Austrianithologist Conrad Laurens when on to outline

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Speaker 1: these specific triggers involved, including short, thick extremities, and clumsy movements,

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Speaker 1: in addition to the big eyes and chubby cheeks. To

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Speaker 1: what degree does cuteness hijack our senses? Though scientists have

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Speaker 1: observed one seventh of a second response time in adults

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Speaker 1: to unfamiliar infant faces, but not to adult faces. A

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Speaker 1: twenty twelve Japanese study found that people who viewed images

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Speaker 1: of infant animals performed tasks better than those who viewed

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Speaker 1: images of adult animals. In other words, cute stimuli improve

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Speaker 1: performance in tasks that require behavioral carefulness. Were simply hardwired

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Speaker 1: to become careful guardians when qutes call to us, and

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Speaker 1: that bleeds over into inhuman cuties as well the kittens, puppies,

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Speaker 1: and cartoon characters. Maybe those cute kitten posters in the

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Speaker 1: office actually serve a purpose after all. At this point,

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Speaker 1: it's easy to think of cuteness and monstrosity as separate entities,

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Speaker 1: but the two states may exist upon the same spectrum

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Speaker 1: of attention grabbing stimuli. Imagine a slider mechanism them in

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Speaker 1: a program or a video game. One direction takes you

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Speaker 1: into the realm of disgusting terror, and the other is

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Speaker 1: a one way ticket to cute town. Social scientist Maya

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Speaker 1: Jejovska Brivchinska wrote a paper on this subject, Monstrous Cute

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Speaker 1: Notes on the Ambivalent nature of Cuteness. In it, she

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Speaker 1: argues that the cute and the monstrous exist in a

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Speaker 1: single dimension, and that there is a tipping point as

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Speaker 1: to how far you can push that cute slash monstrous slider.

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Speaker 1: She writes that this spectrum quote works inevitably as a

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Speaker 1: sort of pendulum, swinging to and fro, and thus being

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Speaker 1: able to play its role only up to a certain

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Speaker 1: point where the sweetness becomes a mock and a pitiful

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Speaker 1: or ironic alter ego of itself. In other words, it's

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Speaker 1: possible to push cuteness so far that it becomes sickening.

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Speaker 1: If we're to push too far in the other direction,

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Speaker 1: arguably the monstrous simply becomes ridiculous. Of course, in either case,

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Speaker 1: individual thresholds to cute slash monster overload will vary. Monsters

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Speaker 1: and cuties may stand at opposing exaggerations on the same

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Speaker 1: slider of visual stimuli. But why would we move that

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Speaker 1: slider to begin with? In making our monsters cute, we

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Speaker 1: diminish the underlying natural or cultural horrors that they entail.

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Speaker 1: In making the cute monstrous, we also dilute its brain

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Speaker 1: hijacking potency. This might also entail what psychologist Orienta Aragon

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Speaker 1: calls a dimorphous expression, in which an overly positive emotion

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Speaker 1: produces a negative reaction. If you've ever felt the desire

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Speaker 1: to pinch an overly cute infant or kitten, then you've

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Speaker 1: felt this phenomenon firsthand. When cute gets tough to handle,

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Speaker 1: a dash of horror balances it out. It would seem

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Speaker 1: we create monsters for a variety of reasons, to entertain,

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Speaker 1: to warn, or to chastise and thrill. We turn them cute,

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Speaker 1: to dull their power, or repurpose them for commercial gain.

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Speaker 1: But the slider can always run back in the opposite direction.

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Speaker 1: We can only rob our monsters of their powers for

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Speaker 1: so long. This episode is based on the article why

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Speaker 1: do we keep turning our monsters cute? On HowStuffWorks dot Com,

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Speaker 1: written by Robert Lamb. For lots more about the science

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Speaker 1: behind monsters, check out Robert's podcast Stuff to blow your

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Speaker 1: mind and to hear a monster story he wrote. Listen

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Speaker 1: to the podcast mini series the second oil age. You'll

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Speaker 1: recognize the voice of one of the characters. Brain Stuff

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Speaker 1: is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com.

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Speaker 1: It is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from

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Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or

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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows,