It never seizes to amaze me how cat pictures (good, bad, and anything in between) are so incredibly popular on photo-sharing sites and social networks.
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| Cat in Frituur Fabiola |
It looks we might have to thank our brains for this. It dawned on me earlier this week while reading '
The decisive moment' by Jonah Lehrer. Lehrer talks about an experiment done by Timothy Wilson (
So Wilson Came: Wilson et al., '
Introspecting about Reasons'). In this experiment the psychologist asked a group of female students to make a choice of their favorite art poster. They were given a choice of a Monet landscape, a van Gogh painting and 3 - yep - cat posters. The group was split up; one group had simply to rate the posters; while the other half had to answer a number of questions as to why they liked or disliked the posters. Every one was allowed to take their favorite poster home.
The two groups made completely different choices. The 'non-thinkers' took the Monet or the van Gogh while the 'thinkers' were almost equally split between the cat posters and the art posters. In follow-up interviews the women who took the art picture home were happier with their choice than the cat posters. 75% percent of the cat poster owners regretted their selection. None of the art poster owners regretted theirs.
The women listening to their emotional side made better decisions than the women reasoning about their decisions.
So the next time I see a hugely popular cat picture on a photo-sharing site, I know that (maybe) the viewers really thought about it :-)
Marleen
