Abstract
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.
Highlights
Cuteness is an emerging field of research and has been attracting attention in various areas, such as psychology (Sherman and Haidt, 2011; Nittono, 2016), neuroscience (Kringelbach et al, 2016), humanities (Dale et al, 2017; May, 2019), marketing (Nenkov and Scott, 2014), and engineering (Marcus et al, 2017)
The dataset includes 50 composite faces, three types of average faces (A60, F30, and M30), and their manipulated faces that were transformed into a cuter (+50%) or less cute (–50%) version
Behavioral and electrophysiological studies have shown that infant faces attract more attention than adult faces at an early processing stage (Brosch et al, 2007, 2008; Holtfrerich et al, 2016). These results suggest that infant faces have processing advantage over adult faces, regardless of their cuteness level
Summary
Cuteness is an emerging field of research and has been attracting attention in various areas, such as psychology (Sherman and Haidt, 2011; Nittono, 2016), neuroscience (Kringelbach et al, 2016), humanities (Dale et al, 2017; May, 2019), marketing (Nenkov and Scott, 2014), and engineering (Marcus et al, 2017). Scientific research on cuteness and the response to it can be traced back to Lorenz (1943) conception of Kindchenschema. He proposed that certain physical elements induce specific actions in animals. For a human example of these innate releasing mechanisms, he noted that several physical features evoke affective responses related to caregiving. According to his introspection, these include a round face, high and protruding forehead, soft body surface, and so forth. The class containing these elements can be called “cuteness,” while each element within the class can be called a “cuteness cue.” Cognitive
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