February 27, 2007
Abstract: ASSESSING THE CUTENESS OF CHILDREN:
SIGNIFICANT FACTORS AND GENDER DIFFERENCES.
By: Koyama, Reiko; Takahashi, Yuwen; Mori, Kazuo. Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 2006, Vol. 34 Issue 9, p1087-1099
A newly developed questionnaire revealed that there are four factors in adults' perception of children's cuteness: childlike behavior, children's imitation of adults, adults' protective feeling toward children, and children's physical attributes. Eighty-four childless undergraduates and 72 adults with at least one child watched a film of a five-year-old boy and girl dressed either in boyish clothes or girlish, and then assessed their cuteness using the questionnaire. The results showed that participants rated equally their feeling of children's cuteness regardless of having or not having their own children. Among the four factors of cuteness, childlike behavior seemed to operate most strongly.
by way of Growing Up Sexually
~Diederik notes "...the authors discuss: "little has been discovered about whether the assessment of children’s cuteness is relatively similar across cultures or not. An exhaustive database search (Koyama & Mori, 2002) failed to find any cross-cultural comparisons concerning children’s cuteness. To answer this question, it is necessary to replicate similar research in a variety of cultures." (fulltext from EBSCOHOST)
[illus. google: kawaii\ not from above links]
Posted by Stubbornson at February 27, 2007 04:49 AM