The authors’ central claim is that choose 1

a. cuteness provokes the same emotional responses around the world.
b. encountering a cute object may lead to changes in behavior.
c. studies of cuteness should include tasks that involve social interaction.
d. cuteness elicits feelings of tenderness in test subjects.

Complete Text:

Although the results are intriguing the mechanism of performance improvement remains unclear for two reasons. First the time to complete the task was not measured. Better performance could be achieved either through slow and deliberate actions or through quick and accurate actions.Measuring the performance speed would help to explain the underlying mechanism. Second, only one type of task was used. If viewing baby animals induced a behavioral tendency toward protection and care giving, performance improvement could be specific to a care-related task The operation task used by Sherman et al. suggests care giving because the player is expected to act as a doctor who helps the patient depicted on the game board with removing foreign objects from the patient's body. Using different types of tasks would elucidate the cause of performance improvement Recently, Sherman and Haidt challenged the classic view that cuteness is an innate releaser of parental instincts and caregiving responses. Instead, they proposed that perceiving cuteness motivates social engagement and primes affiliative, friendly tendencies. This attitudinal change is assumed to be linked with cognitive processes related to mentalizing (i.e.,attributing mental states to agents) and sometimes indirectly leads to increased cares. If cuteness-induced behavioral carefulness is caused by a heightened motivation for social interaction, the effect would not be found in simple perceptual-cognitive tasks that do not suggest social interaction.

The correct answer is:

c. studies of cuteness should include tasks that involve social interaction.

Explanation:

The author explains how in the previous experiment different conclusions can be assumed, since the purpose of the investigation was not focused in a very specific subject. He explains how changes in the responses can be determined according the a previous mental stage of the individual or it can be also determined by the parental sense to careness.

The fact is that in general, the author explains how responses to cuteness and tenderness have a great impact in the social interaction of the implied ones in the study. Therefore, social interaction must be taking into consideration when studying these behavioral patterns, the study must not be only focused on the cognitive responses but also on the influence of the social environment.

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absolutely it most certainly can.