Does cuddling cats or dogs actually ease anxiety?

By Stephen Beech

Cuddling cats or dogs during stressful times doesn't ease anxiety, according to a new study.

Researchers found that cat owners who hug their pets when under stress can actually make negative emotions worse.

The Dutch study showed that interacting with pets when under pressure did not protect against the negative effects of stress on mood.

And, in some cases, cuddling pets during stressful moments can even intensify negative feelings, according to the findings published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Researchers from The Open University of the Netherlands in Heerlen set out to better understand the nuances and underlying mechanisms behind the positive influence of pets on their owners' emotional well-being.

The team also examined if the beneficial influence of pet interaction is specific to either dogs or cats.

They found "tentative evidence" of a difference in how interacting with cats and dogs affects stressed owners.

Corresponding author Mayke Janssens, an assistant professor of psychology at The Open University of the Netherlands, said: "Our findings indicate that stress-buffering is not the mechanism causing momentary emotional well-being when interacting with a pet.

"Interaction with either species did not act as a buffer for negative emotions.

"In cats, we even observed that a higher level of interaction was associated with a stronger link between stress and negative emotions in owners."

Pet owners who participated in the study received 10 app notifications per day over five consecutive days that prompted them to complete a questionnaire about how they currently felt, what they were doing, and if they were around and interacting with their pets.

The research team said that the almost 8,000 real-time data reports provided a moment-to-moment database of pet-owner interactions helped them gain a more "fine-grained" understanding of how companion animals may influence people emotionally in everyday contexts.

The findings showed that, in general, interacting with pets resulted in positive owner emotions, and that in moments during which interaction levels were higher, people experienced more positive and less negative feelings.

The results were the same for dog and cat owners.

First author Sanne Peeters said: "Dog owners were probably more likely to identify as 'dog people,' whereas cat owners were more likely to identify as 'cat people.'

"It's possible that this owner-pet 'match' partly explains why the findings were so similar for dogs and cats."

The research team then investigated whether interacting with a pet can decrease the negative impact of stress more than simply being in the presence of one.

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They found that if owners interacted with their pets when stressed, it did not protect against the negative effects of stress on mood.

Janssens said: "The positive effects of pet interaction on well-being appear to be genuine, but they don't seem to happen because pets help people handle stress better at the exact moment the stress occurs.

"Interacting more intensively with the companion animal did not provide additional emotional benefits beyond those that may arise from the animal simply being present."

Janssens says the findings indicate that a mechanism other than stress buffering — an effect that mitigates the negative impact of stress — might be responsible for the beneficial effect of pet interaction.

But the exact mechanism has not yet been identified as it may differ between contexts in which humans and animals interact.

Janssens said: "It could be that interacting with a pet provides a sense of companionship and that pets help people feel more connected and less alone, which in turn could contribute to improved emotional well-being."

The research team discovered one surprising species-specific effect.

If stressed cat owners interacted with their cats, the interaction didn't help reduce their negative emotions — on the contrary: it made owners experience more intense negative feelings.

Peeters said: "One speculative explanation is that because interactions with cats are often more passive and less demanding in nature, a higher level of interaction might be more emotionally evocative.

"This might not match the need for support in stressful moments."

The researchers say there is no definitive explanation to date, and said that their findings should be interpreted with caution.

They pointed out that the cat owner sample in the study was small, smaller than the dog owner sample, and the association between cats and stressed owners wasn't consistently observed.

Among dog owners, pet-owner interactions didn't intensify the negative emotions owners felt in stressful situations — although they didn't improve them either.

The team said their findings don't mean that some pets are better than others.

But Peeters added: "I wouldn't say that one species makes a 'better' pet than the other.

"Instead, it's more likely about owner personality and preference.

"The main conclusion is that interacting with dogs and cats appears to provide similar emotional benefits."