Can cute animals make you more productive?

It’s known that dogs have been used to help relieve stress in college students during finals week. But is it possible that simply looking at a picture of a cute dog could help to relieve stress and make you more productive as well?

study done at the University of Hiroshima tested how looking at cute pictures before doing tasks involving focus effected people’s focus. They conducted 3 different tests with university students. In the first test, they had the students “perform a fine motor dexterity task” before and after looking at a picture of an animal. Some of the students looked at pictures of puppies and kittens, while others looked at pictures of cats and dogs. They found that the scores of the students who looked at the pictures of the puppies and kittens improved more than the scores of the students who looked at pictures of the adult animals. The second test was the exact same set up, except that the task was “a non motor visual search task”. The results were the same- the students who saw the cute image improved more than those who didn’t. The final test  was a “global-local letter task”, and found that looking at cute images reduced the “global precedence effect” that is typical with global and local tasks.

This was the only study I could find that tested wether looking at “cute” pictures made you more productive, and the study was relatively small, so there’s definitely more research that can be done. But next time you find yourself scrolling down a instagram dedicated to puppies, as I find myself doing multiple times a day, just remember that it’s not procrastinating, it’s getting yourself focused.

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2 thoughts on “Can cute animals make you more productive?

  1. mcm5844

    Similarly to Colby, I found this article very interesting but felt that it did not capture the whole picture. This being the only study you found, it is tough to draw a concrete conclusion. The experiment definitely provides evidence and may even be enough to reject the null hypothesis, that they don’t do anything, but until further studies are conducted there is not enough being tested to make a decision. Regardless, this article definitely made me happy; so maybe its not just the picture but the though of baby animals! There’s always more research to me done.

  2. Colby Kranz

    I found this article extremely interesting but I think you are missing a key component in your post… In that correlation does not prove causation. Just because the students saw cute animals did not guarantee them success on their next tesT… There are many confounding variables such as studying and possibly even the type of animal as wel as how much before the animal is prepresented before taking the test. Anyways, really interesting I never thought about this before! mal as wel as how much before the animal is prepresented before taking the test. Anyways, really interesting I never thought about this before!

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