The Effects of Regular Interaction with Pets and General Happiness

People of all ages in many different households own a variety of pets for many reasons.  Many people, who for one reason or another are not allowed to have pets in their homes may have regular interactions with pets in other ways. Interacting with pets through friends and family, or mental or physical therapy are great ways to maintain a positive relationship with a desired pet. Given that numerous people own pets in the United States it becomes important to know if pets can affect a person’s happiness. Beck & Katcher, 1983; Kidd & Kidd, 1985; Levinson, 1972; Robin & ten Bensel, 1985; Triebenbacker, 1994 (as cited in Triebenbacker, 1998) all have documented that pets help with human emotional well-being by providing unconditional love, functioning as a friend and companion, and helping to achieve trust, independence and empathy towards other people.

The study of human-animal interaction is a new field in research beginning around the 1980’s (Odendaal, 2000). A purely scientific approach would find it strange that there are interspecies relationships. There should not be any special relationships between animal species unless it is beneficial to one or both of the species. Knowing this information makes the findings of human-animal interactions across time confusing and exciting. It seems that domesticating and enjoying dogs and cats as pets has been a part of ancient human traditions (Mugford, 1998).  Evidence apparently shows that humans have been domesticating dogs for 12,000 years.  Levinson (1980) believes that man domesticated animals to show his kinship with nature. There is fossil evidence showing a relationship between a wolf-like canid and Homo erectus about a half a million years ago. One piece of fossil evidence depicts a puppy buried with a human who has his hand around the puppy. Many other fossils have been found to help influence the argument of domestication of animals across time (Archer, 1997). 

Odendaal (2000) describes possible health benefits as a result of associating with pets. There are six neurochemicals in the brain that help to reduce blood pressure. Odendaal tested and found that there was a positive interaction between the increase of the six neurochemicals that reduce blood pressure and the participants interacting with their pet dogs. Jennings, Reid, Christy, Jennings, Anderson, and Dart (1998) found that pet owners have lower systolic blood pressure and plasma triglycerides than non-pet owners. These two studies show a positive correlation between interactions with pets and blood pressure.

Archer (1997) studied different theories about why people love their pets. He bases his whole discussion on cats and dogs for pets. Archer discusses a main theory that is based on the Darwinian perspective that states that humans owning pets is unusual because there are not any apparent benefits to fitness in this relationship. Archer continues to discusses how the benefits of owning a pet, like happiness or an aid for loneliness and depression, might not add up to the costs of taking care of the pet. He states that this is the case and that human and pet interaction is actually a form of parasitism. Parasitism is defined as one species manipulating the other species’ behavior to obtain a benefit. He continues to talk about how the interactions people have with pets are actually a modification of the interactions they have with people. Pets are able to communicate with humans through visual and auditory signals. Dogs display signs of attachment and affection toward their owners by wanting and needing lots of attention. Cats on the other hand are more independent but they still like to be petted and stroked. Archer mentions that people may use pets as substitutes for children or parents. The pets can substitute for children because of their dependency, fun, and excitement. They can also be a substitute for a parent because they can provide comfort and security. There are some limitations of Archer's findings and one is that the study is short term with a small amount of people. Another is that pets might cost a large amount of money but the improvement of health and happiness seems worth the expense.

Everybody has their own ideas of perfect happiness in their lives. A recent study on happiness worked with two kinds of people, extraverts and introverts (Hills, & Argyle, 2001). Extraversion is the measure of sociability and is important because social relationships are a source of happiness. Introverts are people who are not very social and find pleasure in doing things alone or with close friends. Hills and Argyle found that extraverts love social activities and need interactions to be happy, and introverts find happiness by withdrawing from social activities and living a quiet peaceful life in solitude. In our society we see introverted people as abnormal, and extraverted people as normal and very happy. This study establishes that the variables associated with happiness such as self-esteem, life orientation, and mental stability as characteristics of introverted people. Surprisingly, Hills and Argyle also found that extraversion is not significantly associated with happiness. The researchers failed take into consideration the people who are not clearly introverts or extraverts, and also failed to clearly define happiness. In Australia, a national survey was given to the country to determine the health benefits of pet ownership. Many studies starting around the 1950’s have concluded that pet ownership is a big factor in health. Friedmann, Katcher, Lynch, and Thomas’s study (as cited in Headey, 1999) found that heart attack victims who own pets are more likely to survive the year following a heart attack than heart attack victims who do not own any pets. A British study completed by Serpell (as cited in Headey, 1999) gave non-pet owners a dog or cat to care for over a six to ten month period and found that within that time the non-pet owners health and psychological well-being improved. Headey (1999) created the first Australian national survey to determine if dog and cat owners reduce their annual medical needs and in doing so reduce the national health expenditures. Fifty-eight percent of the people surveyed were owners of a dog or cat or both and they reduced the total health expenditure by 5% or 1.813 billion dollars.

A group of 1073 elderly, white, married women were observed in order to discover if pet ownership is an independent predictor of perceived happiness. The research completed by Ory and Goldberg (1983) ascertained that pet ownership alone did not influence perceived happiness and subjective well-being. The elder women that perceived themselves as happy were the women who had the closest relationship with their pets; the women who said they were unhappy were not close to their pets. According to this study it is not only pet ownership that improves happiness but the quality of the owner and pet relationship.

Hanselman (2002) used pet therapy as a means to help a group of adolescents who had anger issues and problems with aggression and cynical attitudes. Animals can be better for therapy than people because healthy people have a tendency to show people who are sick, aged, and mentally or physically retarded negative nonverbal signals (Corson, & Corson, 1980). Dogs attended the adolescent’s group therapy as a means to help inspire them to change from their negative thought processes to more positive, sociable, and productive outlooks. The inspiration was that children and dogs normally form a relationship of unconditional love and total acceptance of each other. A child who owns a pet can observe himself as he truly is by the way he witnesses the pet's response to his treatment (Levinson, 1980). Triebenbacker (1998) found that children’s self-esteem is positively related to their attachment with a pet. Bodmer (1998) established that adolescents with few familial resources benefited from owning a pet. The adolescents seemed to significantly improve their behavior to a more positive manner. The presence of the pets during group therapy appeared to increase the adolescent’s positive feelings and reduce their negative feelings. 

Love is the invaluable ingredient that pets enrich in our lives (Lenvinson, 1980). Happiness and pets are both very important to many people. In the present study happiness is defined as a satisfaction with life and a general sense of well-being, and interaction with pets is defined as engaging in activities with pets such as feeding them, bathing them, playing with them, or any other consistent action for three days a week or more.  People who have a regular interaction with pets should be happier than people who do not.

Method

Participants

There were 30 participants altogether. They were found by easy access, convenience and willingness to participate. The participants lived in the Southeastern part of the United States. Males and females of all ages participated in the study. Any other demographic details were not asked in this study so the ratio of males to females, and age and race are not known. The participants were 15 people with regular interaction with pets, and 15 people without regular interaction with pets.

Procedure   

            The participants were a convenience sample found by easy access instead of random selection. The participants took about 10 minutes to fill out the survey on their happiness. The experimenter administered the survey in an experimenter-administered procedure except for four of the participants. A family member of the experimenter gave those four participants the survey. The participants had as much time as they needed to fill out the survey and were asked if they had any interaction with pets based on the definition that an interaction is some form of contact with a pet at least three days a week or more. Fifteen people with an interaction with pets were chosen to fill out the survey, and fifteen people without an interaction with pets were chosen to fill out the survey.

Measures

The principal measure of this experiment is happiness. The measure of happiness was created by combining items from three previous measures of happiness (Denier, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985; Lyumbomirsky & Lepper, 1999; Schuessler, 1982). The happiness survey had 21 questions that were answered on a 7-point likert-type scale. The happiness survey measured the amount of happiness the participants felt, the higher the score the happier they are. An example of a negatively scored question used for the happiness survey is, “Compared to others, my life is not too good.” There were also 6 questions asking about the participant’s interactions with pets using a 5-point likert-type scale. The interaction with pets portion of the survey measured the amount of people’s interaction with pets, the higher the score the more interactions they had with their pets. An example question used for the interaction with pets survey is, “do you play with pet(s) at least 3 days a week?” Each survey were scored based on the mean of the participant's responses.

Results

Means, standard deviations, and reliabilities of the variables for this study can be found in Table 1. The means for happiness and animal interaction both scored around the midpoint of the likert-type scales. The participants scored around the midpoint, the mean being 3.31 on the 5 point likert-type scale, for the interaction with pets measure and they scored above the midpoint, the mean being 5.4 on the 7 point likert-type scale, for the happiness measure. The internal consistency reliabilities were very high suggesting that the questions contained in each scale were asking about the same subjects.

A correlational test was done to see whether there was a correlation between human-animal interactions and people’s happiness. There was a significant positive correlation, r = .40, p < .05, between people’s interaction with pets and their general happiness, such that the more contact people have with pets, the happier they are.

Discussion

The hypothesis that there is a positive correlation between human-animal interaction and happiness was supported. People who had more of an interaction with pets said they were happier with their lives. If pets influence people’s happiness than they can also influence people’s health and psychological stability. Studies have shown that pets may influence people’s health by reducing blood pressure, improving heart attack victim’s likelihood of future survival, and by reducing factors of general health and annual medical needs (Heady, 1998; Jennings, Reid, Christy, Jennings, Anderson, & Dart, 1998; Katcher, Lynch, & Tomas as cited by Heady, 1998; Odendaal, 2000). Happiness may also increase children and adolescents happiness and self-esteem through pet therapy and continuous interaction and bonding. Several scientists have recognized that pets seem to help adolescents with anger and stress management, and adolescents with few familial resources (Bodmer, 1998; Henselman, 2002; Trienenbacker, 1998). The correlation between pet interaction and general happiness is strong, but there are still many other factors that could make these people happy in their lives besides interactions with pets.

Limitations of the present study

            Many factors limited the present research. First, the survey was not completely administered by the experimenter. It is possible that the other person who administered the survey could have affected the way the survey was answered. Social desirability could have been a problem because the survey was about happiness, a subject that people are weary of talking about or admitting that they might not be very happy. The participants could have been afraid that the person (other than the experimenter) would read the answers on the survey. 

Second, a similar problem occurred with the experimenter. Some of the people did not fully read the consent form and failed to understand that the survey was anonymous. This fact could have impacted their answers since they believed the experimenter would read and judge their answers.

Thirdly, the participants were a convenience sample. They were friends, family, or friends of the friends or friends of the family of the experimenter. There were five friends making up a large part of the sample that took the survey together and did not take the survey seriously. They filled it out hurriedly, and did not read the directions; they often interrupted the other participants, made jokes or asked irrelevant questions, and talked through the entire survey.  Every person in this group also had a regular interaction with a pet. They could have made an error in the study by actually influencing the correlation. Since they were all happy, making jokes, and having a good time they could have answered that they were happier with their lives than they actually were. This could have forced the positive correlation.

Fourthly, important demographics such as race, ethnicity, age and sex were not asked in this study. All of these demographics could influence the reason that the participants scored high on happiness and interaction with pets scale. The correlation cannot be completely attributed to pets influencing people’s happiness without these demographics.

A final limitation of the study is that the participants were informed of the hypothesis before taking the survey. Knowing the experimenters hypothesis could have influenced the participants desire to please the experimenter by answering the questions in a way that would make the hypothesis significant.  

Directions for Future Research

            There are several opportunities for pursuing other research related to this study. For example, this study examined the correlation between human-animal interactions and happiness. Other research could be done to study the effects of animals on ill people. A study could be done on whether animals help people in physical therapy, such as using horseback riding to help  people with multiple sclerosis to gain mobility in their legs.

            Another study that could follow this recent study might be to see how animals affect people with mental disorders. A possible study could be to try and discover if animals help people with depression. People with other mental disorders might benefit from regular interactions with pets because most people with mental disorders suffer from loneliness, depression, and anxiety. If animals can be found to actually help these people than a whole new kind of therapy could develop and possibly benefit many people.

            Several kinds studies could expand on this study, such as studying whether one pet produces more happiness in a person than another pet. Maybe the kinds of pet’s people own actually influence happiness. There are a lot of pets like reptiles that do not have much interaction with people. Dogs or cats on the other hand have continuous interactions with people.  Pets normally need lots of attention like frequent petting, scratching, and walking, and they all need to be fed and have playtime. It is very possible that people bond with some types of pets more than others and that this bond influences happiness.

            There could also be a common causal antecedent that could have affected the relationship between pets and happiness. For example, maybe people who have more money are happier because they have money and the ability to buy more pets. Then again maybe rich people will be more depressed because they do not have time for pets or cannot have pets in their homes. 

Conclusion

The present study tried to find out if animals help people become happier. A correlation was found between people’s happiness and their interactions with pets, but there are numerous limitations making it very important to continue with future research in order to gain more knowledge about the effects animals have on humans. More correlations between pets and happiness may help influence more scientific research to determine if pets can help people in other ways, especially physically and mentally. 

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