There’s no direct link between owning pets and improved well-being: Study

A team of scientists from Michigan State University in the US, who wanted to determine a link between pet ownership and well-being, found that the two were not reliably associated. For this specific research, the team included only those participants from the international study who responded to a question on pet ownership during the fourth wave of data collection - “How many pets do you have?” The study employed both qualitative and quantitative analyses, allowing the researchers to look at several indicators of the participants’ well-being and also ask them to reflect on the role of pets in their lives, which was an open-ended question. The owners also reported negative aspects of pet ownership like being worried about their pet’s well-being and having their pets interfere with working remotely, the researchers said. However, when the pet owners’ happiness was compared to that of non-pet owners, the researchers found no difference in the well-being of the two study groups over time. “People say that pets make them happy, but when we actually measure happiness, that doesn’t appear to be the case,” said William Chopik, co-author of the study and associate professor in MSU’s Department of Psychology.