Looking at Cute Animals Makes You Work Harder

If your boss has ever gotten on your back for looking at Cute Overload, I Can Has Cheezburger or any other site filled with pictures of adorable little animals, you can now defend your predilection for precious pet pictures. As it turns out, researchers have discovered that looking at pictures of cute animals can boost your focus and improve your work performance.

To figure this out, scientists at Hiroshima University in Japan had students perform a number of tasks, including playing a game sort of like Operation before and after viewing pictures of baby ("cute") and adult ("less cute") animals. "Results show that participants performed tasks requiring focused attention more carefully after viewing cute images. This is interpreted as the result of a narrowed attentional focus induced by the cuteness-triggered positive emotion," the study reads.

If you're interested, you can read more about it over at io9, but you'll probably be better off just looking at more cute animal pictures and getting back to work instead.