Can petting dogs ease stress? Here's what the researchers found when pets left the room

Have you been under pressure and felt better when you get connected with a loved one? It must have happened with you. You go into the exam hall, give your best but still feel anxious that you not performed well. Then you meet your friend, discuss and laugh about the paper. Now you feel completely alright. Does the same thing happen when you interact with pets? Scientists did an experiment to find out what happens to your body and mind when you connect with your dog in an intense situation.

For the experiment, scientists gathered dog owners and put them in a stressful situation. Five seconds to answer a quiz question can feel short. It feels shorter when someone is watching and telling you how badly you are doing.

At the University of Innsbruck, researchers put dog owners under that kind of pressure then gave them a five-minute break with their pets. They wanted to see whether petting dogs would help people recover faster. The break offered little evidence of that. The next test told a different story.

Does petting dogs reduce stress?

In the lab, touching a dog appeared to take some of the edge off the next stressful task. Owners who could touch their dogs during the first break had lower heart rates during the second challenge than owners who spent the break near their dogs without touching them. The time between their heartbeats also varied more, a measure known as heart rate variability.

Brain recordings showed a smaller drop in alpha-wave activity, which had fallen during the first stressful task. The heart and brain readings pointed in the same direction. Still, people’s answers about how they felt didn’t necessarily match what the monitors showed. A weaker physical reaction doesn’t always mean someone feels noticeably calmer.

How did researchers test whether touching a dog makes a difference?

Vanessa Kaufmann and her colleagues recruited 64 adults who brought their own dogs. The study has been published in Biological Psychology and used a timed general knowledge quiz and a mental arithmetic exercise to create pressure. During the arithmetic task the participants counted backward in time with a blinking dot. A researcher monitored them by video and gave negative feedback.

The dogs came in during the breaks. In one round, owners could stroke or hold them. In the other, the dogs stayed close on a short leash. Owners could see and speak to them but they couldn’t touch them. Both breaks offered company. Only one offered physical contact. This gave an option to the researchers so they could compare what happened with and without touch.

Why might petting your own dog change how you respond to stress?

Monica Berntsen who is a psychologist and who wasn’t involved in the study told Newsweek that gentle contact with a familiar animal might signal safety to the nervous system. However, the experiment did not confirm on why the effect happened or whether familiarity was essential. Everyone brought their own dog, so researchers couldn’t compare the response with what happens when someone pets an unfamiliar animal.

The results cover two tasks in one lab session. They don’t tell us how long the effect lasts or whether it would carry over to something like a tense meeting. The clearest finding is about timing: the researchers saw no sign of faster recovery during the break. The difference showed up when participants faced pressure again.

FAQs

Did petting dogs make stress go away faster?

No. Researchers found no clear evidence of faster recovery after the first task.

Was having a dog nearby enough to produce the same result?

The same pattern didn’t appear after a break with a dog nearby but out of reach.