Show the doctor pictures of kittens before your next surgery:

In Experiment 1, participants were 40 female freshman at the University of Virginia who were assigned to one of two groups. The experiment involved playing Operation before and after looking at images of high cuteness (puppies and kittens) or low cuteness (dogs and cats). And as the authors predicted, subjects in the high cuteness condition showed greater improvement after viewing the pictures than did those in the low cuteness condition (p=.05).

Experiment 2 did a better job of balancing the images on factors that were ignored in Exp. 1, such as interesting, enjoyable, and exciting. Male undergrads were included as well, to make sure the effect wasn’t limited to cooing 18 year old girls. Again, participants in the high cuteness group showed greater improvement than those in the other group at the p=.05 level. The girls and the boys did not differ on this “cuteness effect.”

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