researcher once said to me over drinks, “The surprising thing about the pet
effect meme is how rapidly it has been accepted by the public.”
Wishful Thinking vs. Research Findings
Clearly, pets can make our lives more enjoyable. But, as Psychology Today
blogger Marc Bekoff pointed out his thoughtful response to Dr. Dorfman’s
post, the preponderance of the evidence does not support the hype about the
curative powers of companion animals.
Take pet industry claims that living with companion animals results in lower
levels of loneliness, depression, and obesity. In a series of Psychology Today
posts (here, here, and here), I reviewed the results of 77 published research
papers on these topics. Only 6 of 21 studies found pet owners were less
lonely than non-owners, only 5 of 31 studies reported that pet owners were
less depressed, and in only 5 of 25 papers were pet owners less likely to be
obese. So, while some studies have found evidence linking pets and human
health, most published research has not.
The Pet Effect Meme and the Availability Heuristic
Why is there such a big mismatch between what the public believes about the
healing powers of pets and the decidedly mixed results of published studies? I
think this is due to a quirk in human thinking psychologists call the availability
heuristic. This is the idea that we are biased by information that easily comes
to mind, usually because we are frequently exposed to it.
An obvious source of information about pets and heath is the media. As far as
I can tell, however, there have not been any systematic studies of media
coverage research on the impact of pets on human health and happiness. So,
I recently turned to Google to examine media stories related to the pet effect.
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Using the Google News search engine I located 81 news items on the pet
effect between 2010 and 2020. I searched using the phrase "the impact of
pets on human health and happiness." I did not include articles on the health
of pets per se, or the debate over emotional support animals on planes, or
articles by Psychology Today bloggers.