Playful kittens, bouncy puppies, floppy-eared bunnies, and giggly babies: What do they all share that makes them so darned cute? Large eyes, small mouth, a wee button nose, and disproportionately large feet resulting in a clumsy gait. Simply writing this is giving me that "squeeeee" feeling.

Upon seeing an adorable puppy, flopping around on the carpet with its new chew-toy, people often respond with excitement. I myself ball my fists, and bring my hands up to my chest as if I were about to fight that puppy — an unusually violent reaction to seeing something I actually find appealing.

This somewhat oxymoronic response was named “cute aggression” by psychologist Oriana Aragón and her colleagues in 2013. Also known as playful aggression, this is an example of a dimorphous display of emotion, when two seemingly opposite emotions exist in tandem (from Greek, “di” meaning twice and “morph” meaning form). The underlying psychology here is similar to when we experience an incredibly happy occasion that leaves us in tears, like your mother blubbering at your wedding: the emotional expression is not representative of the experience. Attending an interview for your dream job and maniacally laughing because you’re too nervous to string a sentence together is also considered a dimorphous display of emotion.

Although the term "cute aggression" did not exist in the English language until recently, many other languages do have words to describe these strangely aggressive feelings towards something cute. In Bahasa Indonesian, "gemas" translates into English as "something so cute you want to do violence to it". The Czech word "muchlovat" means the desire to squeeze a cute person. In the Tagalog language, spoken in the Philippines, “gigil” describes the gritting of your teeth and the urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute. These translations all capture that "sqeeeeee" feeling better than any word I know.