The Impact of Positive Animal Stimuli on Stress and Well-being

Abstract

Interacting with animals, particularly dogs, has been shown to reduce stress and improve mood in humans. The current research aimed to test whether this phenomenon extends to an online program where positive animal stimuli are displayed to participants. Specifically, participants (N = 171) were recruited and completed a stressful task online, which significantly increased participants’ stress relative to baseline. Following this, participants were randomly assigned to one of three intervention conditions: viewing positive animal stimuli (images of puppies), positive non-animal stimuli (images of desserts), or neutral stimuli (images of school supplies). Participants completed pre- and post-intervention measures assessing state stress, anxiety, and positive and negative affect. Repeated-measures ANOVAs were conducted to determine whether the intervention conditions differed in impacting participants’ scores on measures of well-being from pre- to post-intervention. Preliminary results revealed that the positive animal stimuli group had significantly larger reductions in negative affect post-intervention compared to the positive non-animal or neutral stimuli groups. Data collection and more comprehensive analyses are underway. These findings provide evidence of the efficacy of an accessible online animal-based intervention in helping improve state well-being in participants.

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Eric Legge