Sometimes it can be a struggle to keep the spark alive in a long term relationship, but these scientists have devised an interesting (and adorable) way to do so.
A study published in Psychological Science found that pairing images of kittens and puppies with a snap of your significant can increase your positive feelings about them. Yep, looking at pictures of cute animals will basically make you fall in love with your partner all over again.
“One ultimate source of our feelings about our relationships can be reduced to how we associate our partners with positive affect, and those associations can come from our partners but also from unrelated things, like puppies and bunnies,” lead author James McNulty explained.
The researchers took 144 married couples (all under the age of 40 and married for less than five years) and showed each spouse a stream of images every three days, for six weeks. One half of the group were shown positive images along with pictures of their partner, while the others were shown neutral images with snaps of their significant other.
Their data showed that those who looked at pics of puppies (and other happy things) showed a more positive, automatic reaction to their partner and greater improvements in marital satisfaction over the course of the study.
So if you needed another excuse to stare at snaps of adorable animals all day…
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