The Touch of Kindness: The Influence of Stuffed Toy on Perceived Warmth in Emotional Video Content

This experimental study investigated the influence of a stuffed toy on perceived warmth elicited by emotional video content. Warmth was assessed across several dimensions: empathy and compassion, personal impact and tenderness, humanity, and positive feelings. Thirty participants were randomly assigned to view emotionally evocative videos either with or without a stuffed toy present. Contrary to the initial hypothesis, no significant difference was found in overall warmth perception between the two groups. However, an independent-samples t-test revealed significantly increased empathy and compassion in the toy condition (t = -2.3887, p = 0.024, d = – 0.8722), while other dimensions showed no significant differences. These findings support the null hypothesis, suggesting that the toy does not generally alter warmth perception, but warrant further investigation into its specific effect on empathy and compassion. While the study revealed a significant effect on empathy and compassion, other aspects of perceived warmth did not show significant changes. This could be attributed to several factors. Firstly, participants may have possessed personality traits that led them to seek comfort during the experiment, potentially diminishing the impact of the stuffed toy. Secondly, the intensity of the emotions evoked by the video might have been strong enough to overshadow the comforting effect of the stuffed toy. These factors suggest that individual differences and the intensity of emotional content might have influenced the results.