The conventional view is that pets enhance people’s mental well-being and encourage physical activity, resulting in health benefits. However, the relationship may go the other way. People with emotional needs may gravitate towards pets to fulfill their own psychological requirements. What’s more, pet ownership’s health benefits may be fleeting and depend on the species of pet owned.
Pet ownership benefits result from complex factors
In Nature’s Scientific Reports, researchers examined how pet acquisition or loss affected people’s well-being. The scientists recruited participants who were not necessarily devoted to pet ownership in general and weren’t always the pets’ primary caregivers. Companion animal owners who define themselves by their pet ownership may have been predisposed to report improved well-being associated with those animals. By avoiding the biases associated with being a pet lover, the researchers sought to gain a broader understanding of how pets influence humans.
“Pet acquisition initially increased cheerfulness, but this effect was short-lived, lasting only 1–4 months,” they wrote. “Over a longer period (up to 6 months), pet acquisition, particularly dog acquisition, was linked to declines in calmness, activity, cheerfulness, and life satisfaction.”
What’s more, study participants’ mental and physical well-being was not linked to future pet acquisition. Additionally, losing a pet had no significant effect on overall well-being, beyond the initial emotional response.
“These findings challenge the widely held belief that pet acquisition leads to lasting improvements in well-being, suggesting instead that the demands of pet care, especially for dogs, can outweigh initial benefits.”
They pointed out some problems with previous studies methodologies that may have contributed to the belief that pets inherently boosted their owners well-being. From the first step of pet ownership, many studies have relied on convenience samples of people who acquired pets from shelters.
“These samples are inherently biased, as adopters are typically motivated by the desire to ‘rescue’ a pet, which may not reflect the motivations of individuals who purchase pets from breeders or acquire them from other sources,” they wrote.
“Furthermore, comparing individuals considering pet adoption to those who have already adopted may be misleading, as the decision to adopt could itself reflect underlying differences in well-being.”
To get more meaningful results in future research, a study must assess humans' mental states for an extended period before getting a pet and subsequently their long-term psychological condition afterwards, they wrote.
Beyond pet acquisition, previous studies often compared pet owners to non-pet owners. However, differences between pet owners and non-pet owners may extend beyond having a companion animal or not, they wrote. Pet owners often have higher socioeconomic status, which is in itself linked to improved mental and physical well-being.
The value of the pet-human bond may be more complex than it appears at first glance. People come to pet ownership for a range of reasons, and the benefits they feel from pet ownership may have more to do with those individual motivations than the actual act of keeping a companion animal.
