Why You Should Be Watching Cute Animal Videos to Reduce Stress

Close

Social media provides us with a constant influx of content. From political ads to our acquaintances' “humblebrags,” much of the content we consume causes us stress even if we don’t realize it.

However, in the sea of stress-inducing posts, there is also a completely different and often under-appreciated category of content: pictures and videos of cute animals. Light-hearted, heart-warming, and even silly at times, such content is sometimes seen to be lacking substance or considered a time-waster—but there might be more to it.

Research has shown it might actually be beneficial for us to take in more “fluffy” (literally and figuratively) social media content. In fact, some studies have suggested watching cute animal videos canlift your moodand help build your resilience to stress.

Keep reading for a brief overview of the current research on whether cute animal videos can help reduce stress, as well as other evidence-backed ways to boost your mood and productivity.

How Does Social Media Play a Role in Depression?

The Case for Cute Animal Videos

When casually scrolling through yoursocial media feed, you might not realize how the barrage of content is overwhelming your brain. Research has shown that several types of social media posts can be quite stress-inducing for people, even if it is just passive exposure to content while browsing.

For example, a study from the American Psychological Association (APA) revealed how encountering political posts and discussions online is a significant source of stress in many people’s lives.

Online conversations can also quickly turn into conflicts. Even if we aren’t involved directly, just reading them can stress us out, even if we don’t realize it at the time.

Cute animal content, however, is not as likely to stress us out. Several studies have hinted at the benefits of viewing pictures of cute animals, and these benefits might be more far-reaching than one would think.

While no single study provides a complete picture, a group of studies seems to show a link between cute animal videos and less stress and possibly greater satisfaction with many areas of life.

The Stress of Constantly Checking Your Phone

Cute Animals May Increase Relationship Satisfaction

Then, the researchers divided the couples into groups and had each group view a stream of images three times a week for six weeks. The couples in the experimental group saw a stream of images that included their partner paired with images associated with positive effects such as visuals of cute animals or positive words like “wonderful." The other group saw pictures of their partners paired with neutral objects like buttons.

After six weeks, the group who had been viewing the images including cute animal pictures paired with their spouses had more positive automatic responses to seeing their spouses. Additionally, they demonstrated more satisfaction with their marriages in their satisfaction surveys and improvements of a higher degree than those in the control groups.

Lifting Your Mood Can Build Resilience

This process can lead to more positive moods, greater resource-building, and a general “upward spiral of positivity” that can increaseresilience to stress, as well as other benefits.

How Resilience Helps You Cope With Life’s Challenges

Videos Are Great Mood-Changers

Researchers are trying to determine which positive affect-induction techniques work the best. Examples of potential mood-boosting activities being explored include gratitude journaling, visualizing good things happening to us, and loving-kindness meditations.

Positive videos, however, are one of the strongest good-mood-inducers. A 2015 review of studies found that videos had a stronger effect on mood than music and several other mood-induction techniques.

It seems that in moderation, videos of things that lift our mood—like cute animals—are a great trigger for these “upward positivity spirals," which induce life satisfaction and resilience to stress.

How Positive Affect Combats Stress

Cute Animals May Boost Productivity

8 Ways to Boost Your Productivity

Other Ways to Boost Your Mood

There are many ways toboost your moodbeyond cute animal videos. Exercise, seeing a good friend, or simply enjoying a cup of your favorite tea are a few things you can experiment with and incorporate into your day-to-day life.

The following are other activities you can try in conjunction with cute-animal-video-viewing, or on their own. You can never have too many mood boosters in your stress-busting arsenal.

Gratitude Journaling

At the beginning of your day, list three things for which you are grateful. You can also do this at the end of the day, listing things that happened that day or people you saw that provoked asense of gratitude.

You can elaborate as much as you like with each entry, butwriting even a brief listcan give you a mood boost to carry you through the day.

Positive Visualizations

One technique for positivity is using mental imagery tovisualize positive eventshappening to you.The events can be good things that have happened in the past, fantasy events (such as winning the lottery), or your hopes for the future (such as getting your dream job).

Spend just a few minutes imagining in detail how you felt when an event happened or thinking about how you would feel if it happened. Try to remember or imagine all the sensory details, and emotions, as well as what happens next.

Loving-Kindness Meditation

Loving-kindness meditationhas repeatedly been proven to have many benefits for happiness and personal connection.Depending on how much time you have, you can use the technique for anywhere between just a couple minutes to a half hour. Practice loving-kindness meditation with the following steps:

Summary

Even though enjoying cute animal videos can be a reward, you might find yourself hesitant to watch them if you feel that they are unimportant—especially compared to the serious or ego-enhancing content on social media. You might feel watching cute animal videos is simply frivolous with everything else going on in the world.

However, rememberstress managementandemotional self-careare important to our ability to function well in our lives, as well as to be resilient and there for each other. If cute animal videos do that for you, then this “fluffy,” feel-good pastime is not as silly as it may seem.

How to Instantly Lift Your Mood

8 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Fredrickson BL.The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.Am Psychol. 2001;56(3):218-226. doi:10.1037//0003-066x.56.3.218American Psychological Association.Stress in America 2019.Mcnulty JK, Olson MA, Jones RE, Acosta LM.Automatic associations between one’s partner and one’s affect as the proximal mechanism of change in relationship satisfaction: Evidence from evaluative conditioning.Psychol Sci. 2017;28(8):1031-1040. doi:10.1177/0956797617702014Garland EL, Fredrickson B, Kring AM, Johnson DP, Meyer PS, Penn DL.Upward spirals of positive emotions counter downward spirals of negativity: Insights from the broaden-and-build theory and affective neuroscience on the treatment of emotion dysfunctions and deficits in psychopathology.Clin Psychol Rev.2010;30(7):849-64. doi:10.10162Fj.cpr.2010.03.002Ferrer RA, Grenen EG, Taber JM.Effectiveness of internet-based affect induction procedures: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Emotion. 2015;15(6):752-762. doi:10.1037/emo0000035Nittono H, Fukushima M, Yano A, Moriya H.The power of Kawaii: Viewing cute images promotes a careful behavior and narrows attentional focus.PLoS ONE. 2012;7(9):e46362. doi:10.13712Fjournal.pone.0046362Seaward, B. L.Managing Stress: Principles and Strategies for Health and Wellbeing, 7th Edition, 2011.Zeng X, Chiu CPK, Wang R, Oei TPS, Leung FYK.The effect of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions: A meta-analytic review.Front Psychol. 2015;6. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01693

8 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Fredrickson BL.The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.Am Psychol. 2001;56(3):218-226. doi:10.1037//0003-066x.56.3.218American Psychological Association.Stress in America 2019.Mcnulty JK, Olson MA, Jones RE, Acosta LM.Automatic associations between one’s partner and one’s affect as the proximal mechanism of change in relationship satisfaction: Evidence from evaluative conditioning.Psychol Sci. 2017;28(8):1031-1040. doi:10.1177/0956797617702014Garland EL, Fredrickson B, Kring AM, Johnson DP, Meyer PS, Penn DL.Upward spirals of positive emotions counter downward spirals of negativity: Insights from the broaden-and-build theory and affective neuroscience on the treatment of emotion dysfunctions and deficits in psychopathology.Clin Psychol Rev.2010;30(7):849-64. doi:10.10162Fj.cpr.2010.03.002Ferrer RA, Grenen EG, Taber JM.Effectiveness of internet-based affect induction procedures: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Emotion. 2015;15(6):752-762. doi:10.1037/emo0000035Nittono H, Fukushima M, Yano A, Moriya H.The power of Kawaii: Viewing cute images promotes a careful behavior and narrows attentional focus.PLoS ONE. 2012;7(9):e46362. doi:10.13712Fjournal.pone.0046362Seaward, B. L.Managing Stress: Principles and Strategies for Health and Wellbeing, 7th Edition, 2011.Zeng X, Chiu CPK, Wang R, Oei TPS, Leung FYK.The effect of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions: A meta-analytic review.Front Psychol. 2015;6. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01693

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Fredrickson BL.The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.Am Psychol. 2001;56(3):218-226. doi:10.1037//0003-066x.56.3.218American Psychological Association.Stress in America 2019.Mcnulty JK, Olson MA, Jones RE, Acosta LM.Automatic associations between one’s partner and one’s affect as the proximal mechanism of change in relationship satisfaction: Evidence from evaluative conditioning.Psychol Sci. 2017;28(8):1031-1040. doi:10.1177/0956797617702014Garland EL, Fredrickson B, Kring AM, Johnson DP, Meyer PS, Penn DL.Upward spirals of positive emotions counter downward spirals of negativity: Insights from the broaden-and-build theory and affective neuroscience on the treatment of emotion dysfunctions and deficits in psychopathology.Clin Psychol Rev.2010;30(7):849-64. doi:10.10162Fj.cpr.2010.03.002Ferrer RA, Grenen EG, Taber JM.Effectiveness of internet-based affect induction procedures: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Emotion. 2015;15(6):752-762. doi:10.1037/emo0000035Nittono H, Fukushima M, Yano A, Moriya H.The power of Kawaii: Viewing cute images promotes a careful behavior and narrows attentional focus.PLoS ONE. 2012;7(9):e46362. doi:10.13712Fjournal.pone.0046362Seaward, B. L.Managing Stress: Principles and Strategies for Health and Wellbeing, 7th Edition, 2011.Zeng X, Chiu CPK, Wang R, Oei TPS, Leung FYK.The effect of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions: A meta-analytic review.Front Psychol. 2015;6. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01693

Fredrickson BL.The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.Am Psychol. 2001;56(3):218-226. doi:10.1037//0003-066x.56.3.218

American Psychological Association.Stress in America 2019.

Mcnulty JK, Olson MA, Jones RE, Acosta LM.Automatic associations between one’s partner and one’s affect as the proximal mechanism of change in relationship satisfaction: Evidence from evaluative conditioning.Psychol Sci. 2017;28(8):1031-1040. doi:10.1177/0956797617702014

Garland EL, Fredrickson B, Kring AM, Johnson DP, Meyer PS, Penn DL.Upward spirals of positive emotions counter downward spirals of negativity: Insights from the broaden-and-build theory and affective neuroscience on the treatment of emotion dysfunctions and deficits in psychopathology.Clin Psychol Rev.2010;30(7):849-64. doi:10.10162Fj.cpr.2010.03.002

Ferrer RA, Grenen EG, Taber JM.Effectiveness of internet-based affect induction procedures: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Emotion. 2015;15(6):752-762. doi:10.1037/emo0000035

Nittono H, Fukushima M, Yano A, Moriya H.The power of Kawaii: Viewing cute images promotes a careful behavior and narrows attentional focus.PLoS ONE. 2012;7(9):e46362. doi:10.13712Fjournal.pone.0046362

Seaward, B. L.Managing Stress: Principles and Strategies for Health and Wellbeing, 7th Edition, 2011.

Zeng X, Chiu CPK, Wang R, Oei TPS, Leung FYK.The effect of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions: A meta-analytic review.Front Psychol. 2015;6. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01693

Meet Our Review Board

Share Feedback

Was this page helpful?Thanks for your feedback!What is your feedback?HelpfulReport an ErrorOtherSubmit

Was this page helpful?

Thanks for your feedback!

What is your feedback?HelpfulReport an ErrorOtherSubmit

What is your feedback?