What we know is that cute comes from the maternal feeling to nurture infants. Big head, big eyes placed in the middle of the head, stubby limbs, helplessness and vulnerability is the trick to get mothers to nurture their babies. So basically, babies are cute, baby animals are cute, figures with big heads and large eyes are cute but when we get more abstract it gets harder.
We have sweet, nice, pretty, beautiful, how do you measure something that is cute as opposed to something that is sweet. There is no universal measurement for cute. Although, we tend to believe we know what is cute and what is not.
My way of measuring cute is to think to myself ‘when I see this, do I think this is cute? or this is pretty? or this is so beautiful?’. I think most people like cute but have different levels of tolerance for it. For example I think people with lower tolerance would like something basic like Disney (being safe here) and people with high tolerance would like things like San-X where the faces have become so abstract but still formulated to be cute.
Liking cute is like loving gourmet food. It’s a passion and should not be taken for granted.