An adult who happens to own a robust collection of plush pals might make you uneasy. Past studies of adult psychiatric patients, after all, had found that owners of toy animals were more likely than others to have a personality disorder. Now you can relax, however: a study in the September 2012 Journal of Adult Development found no such link in a nonclinical sample of typical adults. The researchers used physiological and self-reported measures of emotion regulation, including tests of psychological immaturity.

Although “some people might automatically assume that an adult owning a toy animal is an indicator of the owner's immaturity,” explains lead author Stuart Brody, professor of psychology at the University of the West of Scotland, “there was no association of adult toy animal ownership with emotion regulation and maturity.”

So go ahead and leave the toy animals on your bed the next time you have guests—but you may want to keep a copy of this article nearby.

This article was originally published with the title Keep the Teddy Bear.

5 Comments

1. 1. dbtinc 08:48 AM 2/8/13

   Yes it does.

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2. 2. sjfone 09:18 AM 2/8/13

   Perhaps so, but I still have my foam cowboy hat to wear at the football games.

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3. 3. Ingamas 12:06 AM 2/9/13

   Maybe what you do with them does.

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4. 4. dadster 02:18 AM 2/10/13

   Or, does it ?

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5. 5. bucketofsquid in reply to dbtinc 04:02 PM 2/15/13

   Wow! What a brilliant rebuttal! I like the way you use a single sentence with no supporting data at all to refute a study that produced results you don't like. When you get pulled over by a cop do you respond by saying "nuh-uh" and driving away?

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