Can Dogs and Cats Reduce Stress? Study Finds Pets May Be “Stress Buffers”

All you have to do is get up in the morning and turn on the TV news, and it’s possible your blood pressure will soar. There’s little doubt that Americans need—and want—a stressbuster these days. According to a study published in the journal Animals, dogs and cats may help protect us from some of the emotional effects of everyday stress. Researchers describe pets as potential “stress buffers.”

The study involved 159 people who lived with dogs, cats or both. Instead of asking participants to remember how they felt over a long period, researchers wanted to capture their feelings in real time.

For five days, participants received 10 randomly timed smartphone notifications each day. They reported what they were doing, whether they were experiencing a stressful activity or event, how they felt and whether their pet was present and/or if they were interacting with the animal.

That produced 4,872 individual observations. A dog or cat was present during nearly 60 percent of those responses.

The results were intriguing.

When something stressful happened, people appeared better able to hold onto their positive feelings when their dog or cat was nearby. Researchers describe this as a “stress-buffering effect.”

You Don’t Need To Interact with Your Pet

Simply having a companion animal present was associated with less negative emotion. But interacting with the animal has the most impact and was associated with greater positive emotion.

So there may be two different effects.

Your dog or cat lying beside you while you’re working may help take the edge off a stressful experience. Stopping to pet your dog, play with your cat or otherwise interact with your companion animal may provide an additional boost to positive feelings.

The researchers also found that the benefits of interaction were not limited to stressful situations.

Could Having a Pet Lower the Need for Psychotropic Drugs?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 23.9 percent of American adults received some form of mental-health treatment in 2023, up from 19.2 percent in 2019. That includes people taking medication for anxiety or depression, other mental-health medications, and/or receiving mental-health therapy.

That’s an interesting question, but this study’s goal isn’t to answer it. The suggestion though is that it’s possible that at least for some people some of the time, a pet can reduce the need for some drugs or perhaps can lower dosage and/or frequency.

Could the human-animal bond be one piece of a larger strategy for managing stress and supporting emotional well-being?

Why Pets May Be a Stressbuster

We know from this study and previous research that there is an association between companion animals and aspects of human well-being. What we don’t know for sure is exactly why.

Researchers have proposed several possible explanations for the “pet effect,” including companionship and social support. But this particular study did not directly measure the type or amount of social support provided by the animal.

What the study does show is that the relationship between pets and our emotions may be more complicated than simply saying, “Pets make us happier.” This study also wasn’t solely dogcentric, including cats, which all studies do not.

The findings suggest that context matters.

When life is going well, having your dog or cat around doesn’t necessarily make you feel more positive. But when something stressful happens, having that animal nearby may help preserve some of those positive feelings. And interacting with your pet may help increase positive feelings whether you’re stressed or not.

For anyone who has come home after a terrible day and found a dog waiting at the door or a cat quietly sitting nearby, these study results are unlikely to come as a surprise.