The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cute animal videos online can be good for you
Remember the crazy cockatoo — the one dancing exuberantly while his human strums and sings Elvis’s “Don’t Be Cruel”? The two-minute video is made funnier still by the dancing cockatoo’s straightman feathered companion, who seems positively mortified by his partner’s antics.
I either wasted two minutes of my life watching the dancing cockatoo video (and I confess, I’ve watched it more than once), or I practiced a little moment of self-care. Mental health experts would argue the latter.
We all need a mood boost now and then, especially when we’re dealing with a pandemic, protests, a tanking economy and the possibility of being attacked by murder hornets. And if some of us get those boosts — or positive emotions, as they’re referred to among psychologists – from watching cute animal videos, experts say that’s fine.
“Anything that’s distracting from negativity and that gives you positive emotion – that makes you feel happy – is worthwhile,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, vice chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of California at Riverside. It doesn’t have to be cute, funny animal videos, either; eating chocolate or talking to friends are other ways people might find positive emotions.
Watching cute content online, Lyubomirsky says, “is easy and accessible,” a quick in and out that gives us a little lift.
Positive emotions — joy, hope and love are among them — have been shown to neutralize negative emotions such as fear, anger and disappointment, says Lyubomirsky.
That dancing cockatoo —or friend or chocolate — goes a long way toward keeping our chins up, especially in a traumatic news environment such as the one we’re living through.
And the little bump we get from a funny video can do more than just balance out the bad news: It can help us get things done. Research psychologist Acacia Parks, chief scientist at Happify Health, a digital mental health company, explains that to complete a task, we need both positive and negative emotions.
“Positive emotions have this adaptive ability to help us explore, think about the bigger picture and be creative,” says Parks. “When you experience positive emotion, it lets you do things you can’t do as well in a negative mood state.”