Study: Petting a Dog During a Break Helps People Cope Better With Later Stress
Researchers at the University of Innsbruck found that petting a dog does not ease stress immediately, but weakens the body's reaction to the next stressful situation.
Researchers at the University of Innsbruck in Austria have found that petting a dog during a five-minute break between two stressful tasks weakens a person's physical response to the second one. The findings are cited by the "ScienceDirect" website. They suggest that contact with a pet may work as a cumulative benefit rather than only as instant relief.
How the experiment worked
The study involved 64 dog owners: 51 women and 13 men, with an average age of 34. The dogs had to be older than two years, healthy and calm in unfamiliar surroundings.
Stress was induced by two tasks, performed while a researcher watched over a video call and gave negative feedback. The first was a general knowledge quiz allowing only five seconds per answer. The second required counting backwards in the head at set intervals, at a pace dictated by a flashing red dot.
Each participant did the tests twice under identical difficulty. In one session the dog moved freely around the room and the owner could pet it. In the other the dog was kept on a short leash, and the owner could see it and talk to it but not touch it. The scientists measured brain activity, tracked heart rate with an electrocardiogram (ECG), and asked participants to rate how they felt.
Results
The researchers first assumed that petting right after a task would speed up recovery, but this was not confirmed: brain activity and heart rate returned to normal at the same pace whether or not the dog was touched.
The difference appeared during the second task. Participants who had petted their dog during the break showed a much weaker bodily reaction to the pressure. Their brain recordings showed alpha wave activity that stayed elevated throughout the second block of tasks, indicating lower stress levels. Those who did not touch their dog in the first break did not show this effect.
The study's conclusion is that petting a dog does not reduce stress instantly, but helps the body handle later challenges more easily.
