Do Dogs and Cats Relieve Stress? Science Provides an Unexpected Answer

Do dogs and cats relieve stress in the same way? A new study followed hundreds of pet owners over several days and found that animals do indeed improve mood, but the results challenge one of the most popular beliefs about our four-legged companions.

Many people say that a pet can turn a bad day into a better one. Just a few minutes playing with a dog or petting a cat is enough to feel a sense of comfort. But is this effect really proven by science? And do dogs and cats influence our well-being in the same way?

A new study sought to answer these questions and revealed that, although both bring emotional benefits, they can act in different ways, and don't always reduce stress as previously thought.

The researchers decided to study people's behavior in their normal routine, instead of taking them to a laboratory. 188 dog and cat owners participated. For five consecutive days, each participant received random notifications on their cell phone, and could respond up to ten times a day.

In each notification, they recorded how they were feeling at that moment, whether they had experienced any stressful situations, whether they were accompanied by other people, and whether they had recently interacted with their pet. In this way, the scientists were able to observe the emotions exactly as they occurred, preventing the participants from having to remember, hours later, how they had felt.

After gathering thousands of responses, the researchers used statistical methods capable of analyzing all this information simultaneously. They compared the moments when the person had interacted with their pet to those in which no interaction had occurred.

In addition, they took into account factors that can also influence mood, such as age, sex, and whether the person was alone or accompanied. The goal was to discover if contact with the animal was actually related to changes in emotions and if this effect varied between dogs and cats.

The results showed that both dogs and cats were associated with an immediate increase in positive emotions and a reduction in negative emotions. In other words, playing, petting, or simply spending time with the animal made people feel better at that moment. However, an unexpected discovery emerged. Scientists believed that animals would also function as a kind of "shield" against stressful situations, reducing the emotional impact of stress. But this practically did not happen.

When researchers analyzed dogs and cats separately, they found a curious difference. Among cat owners, interactions during stressful moments even intensified negative emotions in some situations, instead of reducing them. This doesn't mean cats are bad for mental health.

The authors themselves explain that the result is likely related to how cats and humans usually interact. Cats generally have more independent behavior, and their responses to their owners' emotions may differ from those observed in dogs, which have been selected over thousands of years to cooperate more intensely with humans.

Researchers conclude that the emotional benefits of pets are real, but they are also much more complex than the popular idea that "having a pet eliminates stress." Contact with dogs and cats can improve mood and provide moments of well-being, but the mechanisms behind these effects still need to be better understood.

The study shows that each species has its own characteristics and that factors such as the type of interaction, the owner's personality, and the context in which it occurs play an important role in how animals influence our emotional health.

READ MORE:

Human-animal interaction: understanding the role of dog and cat interactions in emotional wellbeing

Sanne Peeters, Nele Jacobs, Karin Hediger, Jannes Eshuis, and Mayke Janssens Frontiers in Psychology. 16 June 2026, Volume 17 - 2026

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1768288

Abstract: 

Companion animals are often assumed to benefit human emotional wellbeing, yet empirical evidence for this effect and the proposed stress-buffering mechanism underlying this effect is heterogeneous. This study examined whether momentary interaction with a companion animal is associated with pet owners’ positive and negative affect in daily life, and whether these interactions buffer the affective impact of stress. We further tested whether these associations differ between interacting with dogs versus cats. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), 188 dog and cat owners reported their affect, stress, and interactions with their companion animals at random moments up to 10 times per day over five consecutive days. Multilevel regression analyses accounting for repeated measurements nested within individuals, including random intercepts and slopes, and controlling for age, gender, and social context, showed that pet interaction was associated with higher positive and lower negative affect, independent of species. No evidence for a stress-buffering effect was found, instead a species-specific pattern emerged for negative affect in response to event-related stress: interactions with cats amplified, rather than attenuated, the association between stress and negative affect. Overall, findings support robust momentary emotional benefits of interacting with companion animals, but do not support stress-buffering as the mechanism underlying this association. These results emphasize the importance of considering both species and situational context when examining the psychological impact of human–animal interaction.