Validating the Single Item Kawaii Measure

Katie Seaborn; Yijia Wang

doi:10.1145/3816046.3816284

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arXiv · 2607.19352

Validating the Single Item Kawaii Measure

Katie Seaborn·Yijia Wang

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Abstract

Kawaii is the Japanese instantiation of cuteness. As a multimodal percept theoretically derived from the notion of baby schema, kawaii can be a property of voice and sound, visual appearance and form factor, and movement and expression. However, measuring user perceptions of kawaii remains an open question. In the absence of a validated instrument, a one-item self-report measure has been used extensively, but has not been validated. Here, we report on three types of validity -- convergent, known groups, and cross-context -- and reliability for the single item measure across nine data sets featuring responses to video game character voices and visual appearances and computer-generated voice assistant voices from N=967 unique participants. Our results demonstrate initial evidence of the validity of the one-item measure for voice and visual kawaii perceptions. Further rigour can be pursued with novel stimuli, test-retest validation, and concurrent validity against the upcoming multi-item measure of kawaii.

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Katie Seaborn, Yijia Wang. 2026-05-13. Validating the Single Item Kawaii Measure. https://doi.org/10.1145/3816046.3816284

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