Interacting with cats may not necessarily alleviate the owner's stress.
Many pet owners believe that the various stresses they experience from work, relationships, and other sources can be relieved by spending time with their beloved pets when they get home. However, research conducted among people who keep dogs and cats as pets has suggested that interacting with cats may not necessarily alleviate the stress of their owners.
Frontiers | Human-animal interaction: understanding the role of dog and cat interactions in emotional wellbeing
Cuddling cats might make us feel worse when under stress | EurekAlert!
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1131425
Your Cat May Not Ease Stress The Way You Think, Study Finds : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/your-cat-may-not-ease-stress-the-way-you-think-study-finds
A research team at the Open University of the Netherlands conducted a study involving 188 pet owners who owned dogs, cats, or both, to investigate the impact of pet ownership on their mental health and the mechanisms behind it.
The participants received notifications 10 times a day for five consecutive days through a data collection app, and each time they answered questions about their current mood and behavior, whether their pet was nearby, and whether they were interacting with their pet. This is a research method called ecological instantaneous assessment (experiential sampling) , and the research team collected a total of approximately 8,000 real-time data points recording interactions between pets and their owners.
The research team's analysis of the data revealed that, in general, interaction with pets brings positive emotions to pet owners. The study showed that the more frequent the interaction, the more positive emotions people experienced and the fewer negative emotions they felt.
This result was observed in both dog owners and cat owners. Sane Peters, the lead author of the paper and a researcher at the Open University, said, 'Dog owners tend to have a strong sense of being 'dog people,' while cat owners tend to have a strong sense of being 'cat people.' The compatibility between owners and pets may be one reason why the results for dogs and cats were so similar.'
Next, the research team analyzed the effects of 'interacting with pets' and 'being near pets' on the stress levels of pet owners. The results showed that interacting with pets when owners are stressed does not reduce the negative impact of stress on their mood.
These results suggest that the positive effects of pet interaction on owners' mental health and well-being are due to a mechanism different from stress reduction.
Even more surprisingly, it was shown that when stressed owners interacted with cats, their negative emotions worsened rather than subsided. The more intense the interaction with the cat, the stronger the owners' negative emotions became, and this tendency was unique to cats.
Peters said, 'One hypothesis is that because interaction with cats is generally passive and low-demand, more intense interactions may be emotionally stimulating. This may not necessarily coincide with the support needed in stressful situations.'
The exact mechanism behind these results has not been identified, and the research team points out that caution is needed when interpreting the findings. It's also important to note that the proportion of cat owners in this study was relatively small.
Peters stated, 'Neither dogs nor cats are inherently better pets than the other. It largely depends on the owner's personality and preferences.'
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