Cuteness Is Political

An election billboard illustrated with presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto (left) and his running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka in Jakarta on March 18, 2024. —Yasuyoshi Chiba—AFP via Getty Images When you think of a military general, the descriptor “cute” probably doesn’t come to mind.

But cuteness may have helped Prabowo Subianto , a former military leader and defense minister, reshape his image to prevail as a conservative presidential candidate in Indonesia’s 2024 elections .

His campaign positioned Subianto as a cuddly grandfather-type figure —complete with AI-generated cartoons —despite his controversial military past .

Our recent research suggests that this electoral result isn’t all that surprising.

Specifically, we found clear links among specific types of cuteness, purity, and conservatism, revealing important implications for political persuasion and messaging.

Part of our motivation for studying these relationships was that cuteness is ubiquitous now, with adorable puppies, bears, and babies appearing in messaging for everything from sports to toilet paper to political campaigns .

By “cute” we specifically mean the attributes of infants—like big eyes, chubby cheeks, round bodies—that elicit a caregiving response , a definition academics have aligned around over the past century.

Marketers have recognized and capitalized on this reality.

Case in point: the prototypically cute Hello Kitty brand has generated tens of billions in lifetime retail sales .

Cute collectibles like Squishmallows and Popmart’s Labubu dolls trend heavily on social media and were among the most coveted products of 2025.

But the impacts of cuteness don’t seem uniform across groups and individuals.

Cuteness draws some people in more than others.

To understand why, we drilled into deeper cognitive associations related to the concept of cuteness.

Our study , recently published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science , featured nine controlled experiments that supported a key finding: conservatives showed a greater preference than liberals for baby-like cute products, and the link was partly explained by the association between that aesthetic and innocence/purity.