An Unconventional Way to Enhance Your Focus in the Practice Room

Have you ever watched a young child practice while they were angry about having to practice?

Or maybe you’ve had the experience of forcing yourself to practice despite being in a not-so-terrific headspace?

We can’t always be in the best of moods when practicing of course, but I remember a number of occasions when I would simply go through the motions of practicing while mentally somewhere else. Whether replaying something that happened at school, or the injustice of having to practice while my friends were outside having fun.

Needless to say, I don’t think I got a whole lot out of these “practice” sessions. Which made me wonder – is there such a thing as a mood that’s optimal for practicing?

And if so, how can we get there?

A study!

A team of Japanese researchers (Nittono et al., 2012) recruited 48 college students to play a game similar to the classic ''Operation'' game .

They were curious to see if performance on this game might be affected by exposure to…cute animal photos. 🤨

Wait…what?

Yeah – I know this probably sounds suspiciously like a late April Fool’s joke, but cute things do make us smile. They capture our attention, and make us want to care for them (or strangely, squish them 😊).

And as you may also know, Japanese society seems to accept and value cuteness or “kawaii” on a whole different level than it is in some other cultures. So it does sort of make sense that this would be an area of research interest.

Cute photos vs. not-so-cute photos

Anyhow, the researchers had all of the participants play the game twice. But between each game, they were asked to rank 7 pictures in order of preference.

One group was given pictures of cute puppies and kittens to rank (the baby animal group).

Another group was given pictures of adult dogs and cats to rank that were not so cute (the adult animal group).

So…what would happen? Would exposure to cute pictures affect the participants’ performance on their second attempt at the game?

The results

Well, both groups did improve. Which you’d expect, given that they would be more familiar with the task on the second try. However, the improvement wasn’t equal!

The students who looked at pictures of not-so-cute adult animals improved performance by 11.9% from the first to the second try.

And the students who looked at the cute pictures improved their performance by 43.9%!

So…why did cute photos have this performance-enhancing effect?

More attentiveness and care

The researchers found that the participants in the baby animal group seemed to perform the task with more care, as they took more time on the second trial of the game. It took them 12.2% longer to complete round 2, while the adult animal group spent almost exactly the same amount of time on both trials (only a .8% increase).

 

Caregiving instinct? Improved mood?

Ok – but why did exposure to cuteness lead them to slow down and take greater care? Did the photos trigger some sort of caregiving instinct, which transferred to the doctor-patient theme of the game?

Or could it be that the cute photos simply improved their mood, which led to approaching the task with greater care?

Another study!

The researchers recruited a fresh set of 48 students to dig a little deeper.

The second study was set up just like the first, except this time, the task was a number-search challenge, which involves counting the number of times they could find a specific number within a grid of other numbers. In other words, this was a pretty emotion-neutral task, to rule out the possibility of caregiver instinct as a performance booster.

And to rule out the possibility that the performance gain was related simply to viewing pleasant photos, they added a third group, who were shown pictures of yummy-looking food.

So how would the cute photo group perform this time around? Would there still be a performance advantage?

The results

Yeppers.

Once again, looking at cute puppies and kittens led to a significant improvement in performance from round 1 to round 2. The baby animals group improved their accuracy score by 15.7%, and completed the task 13.2% faster.

Meanwhile, the adult animals group and food group performed about the same, with only a 1.4% and 1.2% improvement in their accuracy scores, and a speed boost of only 4.3% and 3.2%, respectively.

Ok, so there does seem to be something about cute animal photos that enhances performance, but seriously…why?

A narrowing of attention?

Well, the second study suggests that eliciting the “awww” response doesn’t improve performance simply because of a caregiving instinct, or just by exposing people to pleasant imagery.

Based on findings from related studies, the researchers suggest in their paper that cute things don’t improve performance by simply changing our mood or eliciting an emotional response. They note that performance improves through a narrowing of our attention – where we become more attentive to small details.

Which helps to explain the performance improvement in both the “operation” game and digit-search task, each of which benefits from an increase in focus.

But still…why?!

And why does cute stuff make us more attentive to detail?

Well, that part isn’t entirely clear. Though it might have something to do with increased physiological activation (i.e. heart rate and breathing rate).

Takeaways

Nevertheless, an increase in focus and attention to detail are certainly quite useful qualities to have during your practice (or study). Even if it’s just to ensure that you get off to a productive start, or get refocused when your attention starts to wane (as it’s not clear from this study how long this boost in focus and attentiveness might last).

So the next time you’re not feeling especially inspired or in the mood to practice, maybe it’s worth taking a moment to get into a more cute-enhanced positive headspace first? To see if you can nudge yourself towards a better place by indulging in some cute puppy or kitten photos before you begin – as long as you don’t get sucked into some cute animal internet rabbit hole, of course!

Additional stuff

Want to discover more studies that make you sort of chuckle and think at the same time? Check out the Ig Nobel Prize winners

References