The Everyday Truth Behind the Pet Effect
The “pet effect” is a widely held belief that having an animal in the home can boost happiness and provide stability during stressful times. This idea resonates with many pet owners and has been the subject of research for decades. Yet, despite its popularity, the scientific evidence remains mixed, with studies reporting positive, neutral, and even negative results. This ongoing debate has generated its own extensive literature, highlighting the complexity of understanding how pets influence human wellbeing.
A recent study by Sanne Peeters, Nele Jacobs, Karin Hediger, Jannes Eshuis, and Mayke Janssens from the Open University of the Netherlands took a fresh approach by examining the pet effect in the flow of everyday life. They recruited 188 dog and cat owners from the Netherlands and Belgium and used a smartphone app to collect real-time data. Participants were prompted ten times daily over five days, between 7:30 a.m. and 10:30 p.m., resulting in 7,963 notification records that captured mood, stress, and pet interaction at those moments.
The findings reveal a nuanced picture, especially when differentiating between “bad days” and ordinary moments. While the pet effect is often cited as a buffer against stress, this study’s results challenge some common assumptions.
Stress Buffering: Dogs vs. Cats
As expected, stressful events negatively impacted mood. On a seven-point positive-affect scale, a one-point increase in event-related stress corresponded to a 0.41-point drop in positive mood, relative to an individual’s average. However, when considering interaction with the pet, pooled across both dogs and cats, there was no significant buffering effect against this stress-related mood drop. The interaction term testing this relationship returned a negligible effect (0.01), with a p-value of 0.315 and a confidence interval spanning from -0.01 to 0.04—indicating no statistically meaningful influence of greater pet interaction on mood under stress.
Digging deeper, the researchers analyzed dogs and cats separately. For dog owners, more interaction with their pets during stressful moments was linked to a modest but statistically significant retention of positive mood (effect size 0.04, p = 0.018, confidence interval 0.01 to 0.08). Conversely, cat owners showed a slight negative trend (-0.02), suggesting that increased interaction during stress did not improve mood and might even be associated with a decrease.
This species-specific difference was further examined through a three-way interaction term (stress × interaction × species), which narrowly missed the corrected significance threshold (p = 0.040). Following the authors’ analytical protocol, the non-significant three-way term led to reliance on the pooled two-way interaction result, which showed no overall buffering effect. Notably, the positive dog-specific coefficient was reported but not emphasized in the paper’s main conclusions.
Looking at low-level “activity stress,” such as irritation from unwanted tasks, no buffering effect was found for either species in relation to mood. Yet, for negative affect during event stress, species differences emerged more clearly, with cats showing a surprising pattern that warrants caution and further research.
It is important to emphasize the study design here: pet interaction was only measured when the animal was physically present, so these results reflect whether interacting more than usual with a pet in the room helps with stress—not whether having the pet present at all makes a difference. The authors acknowledge this limitation, referencing their own prior research suggesting that the mere presence of a pet might be the key factor in stress buffering, rather than the level of active engagement during stress.
Measuring Mood and Interaction in Real Time
The study’s methodology involved asking participants to rate their mood using ten emotional descriptors—four positive (cheerful, satisfied, happy, enthusiastic) and six negative (insecure, lonely, anxious, irritated, sad, guilty)—on a seven-point scale. Activity stress was assessed through three questions about the participants’ current task, focusing on preference, effort, and competence. Event stress was measured by rating the most important event since the last prompt on a scale from very unpleasant to very pleasant, with only unpleasant events considered stressful.
Interaction with the pet was captured via a single question, “we are interacting,” also rated from one to seven. The sample skewed heavily female (146 of 188) and well educated (159 with vocational or university degrees), and participants were recruited through diverse channels, including social media, veterinary clinics, and pet owner clubs. Despite this, compliance was moderate, with participants responding to about one-third of prompts on average.
Small but Consistent Mood Lifts Linked to More Interaction
When owners interacted with their pets more than usual, their positive mood increased by approximately 0.06 points per interaction point, while negative mood decreased by about 0.02 points per interaction point, both on a seven-point scale. Though these increments may seem minor, they were consistent across 2,707 recorded moments and reached statistical significance with confidence intervals excluding zero.
The effect size—six-hundredths of a point per unit of interaction—is subtle but meaningful at the population level, especially considering the study’s real-world, repeated-measures design. This suggests that on an ordinary day, engaging more with a pet corresponds to a slight boost in mood.
Contrary to the researchers’ initial hypothesis that dogs, being more socially demonstrative, would show stronger effects, the study found no statistically significant species difference for this interaction effect on mood. The data hinted at dogs having a slight edge, but the evidence was not conclusive. Additionally, the observational nature of the study means directionality cannot be established: people in better moods may naturally seek more pet interaction, or pets may help improve mood—the study could not disentangle these possibilities.
Moreover, the social context control was limited to whether participants were alone or with others, without assessing relationship quality, leaving open the question of how human social support interacts with pet companionship.
Unexpected Findings About Cats and Negative Affect
When focusing on negative mood during stressful events, a significant species difference emerged. For dogs, no moderation of negative affect by interaction was detected, though more interaction still correlated with lower negative mood overall. For cats, however, increased interaction in stressful moments was associated with an increase in negative affect (effect size 0.04, confidence interval 0.01 to 0.07).
The authors approach this finding with caution, noting the smaller sample size for cat owners (718 observations versus 1,667 for dogs) and the need for replication. They speculate that cats may offer quieter, less demanding companionship, which could heighten emotional sensitivity during distress, sometimes making things feel worse rather than better if the support does not align with the person’s needs.
This nuanced interpretation aligns with broader research, which includes studies such as Beetz et al. (2012) and Rodriguez et al. (2021), cited by the authors, that have found animals can buffer stress. The variability in results across studies underscores the complexity of human-animal interactions and the importance of context.
Pets and the Ordinary Days: What This Study Really Shows
Most people attribute their pets’ greatest value to crisis moments—the idea that a dog or cat “gets me through” tough times. However, this study’s smartphone-based experience sampling captured moments on ordinary days, revealing small but consistent mood benefits tied to pet interaction. When stressful events occurred, the overall effect of interacting more with a pet did not show a general buffering effect.
Looking by species, dog interaction hinted at maintaining positive mood under stress, while cat interaction surprisingly correlated with increased negative mood during unpleasant events. The authors conclude that no general stress-buffering effect of companion animals was found, except for a species-specific pattern emerging with cats.
Ultimately, while pets remain valued companions who can brighten ordinary moments, their role in alleviating acute stress may be more complex and species-dependent than commonly believed. The study highlights the need for further research with longer durations, larger samples, and refined measures to clarify how different pets influence emotional wellbeing during challenging times.
For anyone experiencing ongoing stress or emotional difficulty, professional support from healthcare providers remains the recommended course of action. Pets can be part of a supportive environment but are not a substitute for clinical care when needed.
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