Cute pics will make you more productive!

A unique piece of research from Japan showed that we are more productive and better able to focus after looking at pictures of cute animals, such as kittens and puppies. The researchers tested groups of volunteers in a manual and intellectual task before and after showing them pictures of baby animals, adult animals or food. The results showed that there was an incredible 44 per cent improvement in the manual and 16 per cent improvement in the intellectual task after the volunteers looked at images of kittens and puppies. The pictures of adult animals and food had only a small positive effect. The ability to perform tasks requiring focused attention better after viewing cute images was explained as the result of a narrowed attention focus brought about by the positive emotions and an improved ability to process information. It was also suggested that cute pictures may be used to induce desired behaviour in specific situations, such as driving and office work!

_{Nittono, H, et al., 2012. The Power of Kawaii: Viewing Cute Images Promotes a Careful Behavior and Narrows Attentional Focus. PLoS ONE. 7 (9) e46362.}