You come home after a rough day; maybe your boss was awful, your commute was terrible, or the world felt heavy. You pick up your cat, needing some comfort. It watches you, flicks its tail, and wanders off. Meanwhile, your friend’s dog greets them as if they just won the lottery. So, which pet is better for your mental health? A new Dutch study tried to find out, and the results are more complicated than you might think.
In a study published in Frontiers in Psychology, titled ‘Human-animal interaction: understanding the role of dog and cat interactions in emotional wellbeing’ by Sanne Peeters and colleagues, researchers followed 188 dog and cat owners over five days to see if interacting with their pets had real-time effects on their mood and stress levels. The method used was ecological momentary assessment (EMA); participants were pinged up to 10 times a day via a smartphone app, and asked quick questions about whether they were interacting with their pet, how they felt about their mood, and how stressed they felt.
Both pets gave people a short happiness boost, but stress is a different story
That may seem like a small thing, but according to the study in Frontiers in Psychology, interacting with either dogs or cats was linked to a short-term mood boost, with no difference by species. Both made their owners feel a bit better at the time. But when it came to stress, the picture was different.
Neither dogs nor cats were able to reduce their owners' stress levels. And while dogs were essentially neutral, cat interactions appeared to be associated with worse stress outcomes. According to the Frontiers in Psychology study, more intense interactions with cats during stressful moments were tentatively linked to stronger negative feelings rather than weaker ones. Dogs showed no such pattern, with interaction during stress having neither a positive nor a negative effect.
