Scientists have found that cuddling a cat when you're stressed might not be the best idea

Psychologists in the Netherlands monitored cat and dog owners in real time and found that interacting with a pet does indeed improve mood — but it does not act as a shield against stress in the heat of the moment. In fact, for cat owners, intense interaction with their pet during times of stress was actually linked to stronger negative emotions.

The results have been published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

An important caveat: the effect with cats proved to be inconsistent — it was not replicated identically across all analyses, and the sample of cat owners was smaller than that of dog owners. The authors themselves urge caution when interpreting these findings.

Details

The study differed from most laboratory experiments on the subject of pets. Instead of simulating stress in artificial conditions, the researchers observed people in their everyday lives. For five consecutive days, participants received ten notifications a day on their smartphones — and each time answered a short questionnaire: how they were feeling, what they were doing, whether they were with their pet, and whether they were interacting with it. In the end, nearly 8,000 real-time measurements were collected.

The overall picture was as expected: the presence of a pet and interaction with it generally improved the owners’ mood. The more actively people interacted with their pet, the more positive and fewer negative emotions they experienced. Moreover, this effect was virtually the same for cat and dog owners.

But then the researchers asked a more nuanced question: does a pet actually help at the very moment of stress — does it reduce its negative impact on mood? And here the result turned out to be unexpected. Neither for cat owners nor for dog owners did interacting with their pet protect them from a bad mood in a stressful situation. Simply being near an animal and actively interacting with it — in terms of protection against stress — yielded roughly the same result.

And for some cat owners, the picture turned out to be even more interesting. When they were stressed and actively interacting with their pet, their negative emotions did not diminish but intensified. One of the authors’ hypotheses is that cats are less ‘demanding’ companions; their interaction with their owner is often passive and unpredictable. Perhaps this is precisely what does not meet a person’s needs in a difficult moment — a sense of support and responsiveness.

Why pets improve mood in the first place is a mechanism the study has not yet established. The authors suggest it may be down to a sense of companionship, that is, the feeling that you are not alone. But this is still only a hypothesis.

Why this matters

Studies on the benefits of pets for mental health appear regularly, and the belief that animals relieve stress has long been established in the public consciousness. This new study refines that picture: yes, pets do improve emotional well-being, but not because they help cope with stress in the heat of the moment. The mechanism is, it seems, different — and it has yet to be discovered.

This is important in practical terms. If, at a difficult time, a person expects something from their pet that it cannot provide — instant stress relief — this can lead to disappointment or even an intensification of negative feelings, as was observed among some cat owners.

At the same time, the authors emphasise: it does not follow from this that cats are worse than dogs or that some pets are ‘better’ than others. We are talking about nuances, not passing judgement on an entire species.

Background

The impact of pets on human mental health is a rapidly developing area of research. Previous studies have generally confirmed that pet owners are less likely to suffer from loneliness and anxiety. However, most of these studies were conducted in laboratory settings or were based on questionnaires — that is, on how people recall their feelings, rather than on what they actually felt at the time.

The method used in this study — known as ecological momentary assessment (EMA), where data is collected in real time via a smartphone — helps to avoid memory bias and get closer to what is actually happening. Almost 8,000 measurements over five days is a significant dataset for this type of research.

Source

Sanne Peeters, Mayke Janssens et al., ‘Human-animal interaction: understanding the role of dog and cat interactions in emotional well-being’, Frontiers in Psychology (2026).