friends with benifits

Friends with Benefits:

The Positive Effects of Pet Ownership

By: Ryan Pugh

Psychology 385

Central Michigan University

Fall 2012

PETS BENEFITS TO THEIR OWNERS

Abstract

A study called “Can Pets Stave Off the Sting of Social Isolation and Rejection?” done by

by McConnell, Brown, Shoda, Stayton, & Martin (2011) was a study which measured how social

rejection and pet ownership have a relationship. This study had found that pets have the ability

to lower the feeling of social rejection after writing about them. That study is what this study

piggy backed on to look basically at how stress and pet ownership have a relationship. The

study was conducted to test both the similarities in social needs and stress of people who have

pets. However, there was nothing significant to report in the social needs of pet owners. The

variables of this study was the level of stress and which of the second activity manipulations the

participants were randomly put in while the original study used social rejection instead of

stress. The study found that there was a significant difference in the groups asked to

recall/write about a stressful event then a neutral were more stressed then participants asked

to recall/write about a stressful event and then their pet. These results let us reject our null

hypothesis and accept our hypothesis. These results ran hand in hand with the previous studies

idea that pet ownership has the ability to increase health benefits such as lower ones’ stress in

certain situations.

Friends with Benefits: The Positive Effects of Pet Ownership

People all around the world are owners of pets reasons may vary from person to

person, race to race, and county to country, but there has to be some similarities of why people

all around the world own pets. This study conducted was intended on determining if one of the

health benefits of owning a pet may be that pets have the ability to help the individual that

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owns it become less stressed. This study hoped to find in one demographic of pet owners in

Michigan that when stressed they would become less stressed when recollecting happy

thoughts of their pet.

Theories of past research believe that pets have the ability to be social support for

individuals. A more specific example of this would be how pets can provide owners with a

protective aspect by scaring away unwanted predators. Pets have the ability to also provide

unconventional love that doesn’t involve any judgments which can be a problem from seeking

support from other humans. Evidence has been found that pets have to ability to provide

positive psychological implications to individuals; however, a good amount of these studies are

involving people in harder times, medically. An example of this is in a study which found that

pet owners aren’t as likely to die within a year after having a heart attack as individuals who

aren’t pet owners (1% vs. 7%, respectively; Friedmann & Thomas, 1995). In addition to the idea

that pets can have healthy relation to owners, is a study done that found elderly Medicare

patients with pets had fewer visits to a physician than elderly Medicare patients without pets

(Siegel,1990).

Finally a study done by Duvall and Pychyl that relates heavily to this study found that

there were two significant correlations about social support and level of stress and then

between social support and dog ownership. This article does a perfect job at kind of leading us

to our hypothesis because it finds in summary that dogs are considered social support and

lower stress levels to owners. This study was more in depth on areas of the benefits of family

and friends support relation to support as well while our study specifically focused on pet

ownerships ability to decrease stress (Duvall & Pychyl, 2008).

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These theories all helped our study become more focused on idea of one reason for pet

increased health benefits may be due to the fact they have the ability to lower stress. From

these studies we came up with two hypotheses and an interactional hypothesis of the idea that

being a pet owner could reduce stress.

Simple 1: Participants who are assigned in the stress condition and the pet condition will

have lower levels of stress than participants put in the stress and map condition at the

end of the experiment.

Simple 2: Participants who are asked to write about their bed time routine in the first

activity then about their pet or map in the second activity will have no effect of stress

levels at the end of the experiment.

Interactional: Stress responses will be a function of an interaction between stress

manipulation (stress condition and bedtime routine condition) and the second activity

manipulation (pet condition and map condition).

Method

Participants

68 Participants were selected in this study aging from 18 to 56 years old. The majority of

participants were randomly selected and students of Central Michigan University. In each of the

groups there were at least 14 participants. Before participating in the experiment participants

signed in agreement a consent form. Some areas of what this explained was: they will be kept

unanimous, they can drop out at any time if they felt uncomfortable, they would be treated

ethically, and our information if they had any further questions. This is how participants were

treated in APA ethical standards.

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Materials and procedures

For our study we had students first have a seat in a quiet room with minimum

distractions and handed them a packet with all the surveys in it. The first instruction to the

participants was, “if you agreed to participate, we are going to give you a packet that includes

two sets of surveys and 2 blank pieces of paper. Your participation will take approximately 30

minutes or less…” Then subjects answered three questions: are you pet owners, how many pets

do you have, pet- name, species, length of pet ownership, if pet lives with them. Then

participants went on to the pet anthropomorphism survey which was 9 questions. Then a 17

question social acceptance scale followed and the SACL 30 question survey after. Participants

then spent five minutes either writing about something stressful to them or their bed time

routine followed by another five minute writing about either an enjoyable time with their pet

or drawing a picture of campus. The way this was stated to the participants was “please open

your packet up to the first blank sheet of paper provided. You are going to write about your

bedtime routine/a time you felt extremely stressed out (for example: the night before an exam

or a time you were stuck in traffic) on the piece of paper. You will be given 5 minutes to write,

we ask that you use all of the time provided and include as much detail as possible. You may use

the front and back of the paper, but please only use the first sheet. You may begin now.” The

bed time/stressful time was substituted by pet/map for the second writing activity. After the

last writing they were then given the same packet of surveys excluding the first three questions.

The group (condition) they were put in was selected randomly.

This study used a 2 x 2 ANOVA for this experiment which involves having 4 groups total,

which the other study used a 2 (social rejection manipulation: rejection vs. control) X 3 (writing

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about: pet, best friend, map.) Different scales were used because this study’s goal was to find

stress reduction which used the SACL checklist (McCormick, I. in 1985.) The study replicated

used a social rejection scale. This study used The 10-item Anthropomorphism Scale to test pet

anthropomorphism scale while the replicated study used a different one(Albert & Bulcroft,

1988.) The replicated study used computers to administer its scales, while this study just used

paper packets with the scales included in them.

Instruments

Three scales were used in this study, but only two were actually looked at. The first scale

used was the Stress-Arousal Checklist: which was a checklist asking the way participants felt

emotionally at the current time about the word (++, +, ?, -) and was used as a stress scale. This

scale had 30 items and 17 of which measured stress numbers (1, 5, 6, 9-13, 18, and 23) were

plus 1 if ++,+ and (2, 3, 15, 21, 22, 25, 27, and 28) were plus 1 if ?,-. The reliability for this scale

Cronbach’s alpha was 0.78 after the study with Cronbach’s Alpha of .69 before. While the SACL

has evidence of known-groups validity such that scores on the stress dimension increased as a

consequence of a stressful situation. Additionally, a prolonged, monotonous, and repetitive task

resulted in increases in stress scores and decreases in arousal scores. The SACL has also been

shown to have concurrent validity, with scores correlating with various physiological measures.

The scale was made by Mackay, C. (1978) and revised by McCormick, I. (1985.) The scale was

retrieved from the book by Fischer, J., & Corcoran, K. (2007).

The Anthropomorphism Scale: The 10-item Anthropomorphism Scale was the second

scale used. This scale was used to access respondents’ feeling towards their pets. This was 10

item Likert-scale in which 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree). The Cronbach’s alpha for

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this scale was 0.69. Analysis to test the homogeneity of items in this scale revealed that

Cronbach’s alpha was 0.85. This scale had no validity scores found to report (Albert & Bulcroft,

1988.)

The 17- item social needs scale was used from Zadro et al. (2004), but wasn’t relevant to

the results found in this study so this scale didn’t end up getting used.

Results

This study was conducted to determine whether thoughts about one’s pet could impede

the negative results from an experience of writing about a stressful situation. To guarantee that

there were no preliminary differences in stress manipulation at time one between participants

as a function of the experimental conditions, we conducted a 2 (stress manipulation: stress

writing vs. bed time routine writing) x 2 (condition: pet writing vs. map of campus

writing/drawing) between-subjects ANOVA on participants’.

To determine the results that our experimental manipulations had on participants, we

subtracted the first stress measures score that participants took with the second stress

measure score to determine the difference score. There was not a significant main effect of the

second activity manipulation [F(1,64)=1.1, p<.30, N²=.02], indicating the second activity

manipulation had no effect on stress levels at the end of the experiment. Because the results

found no effect on stress the second hypothesis was accepted. More importantly, there was a

significant main effect of the stress manipulation [F(1,64)=6.75, p<.01, N²=.10], indicating the

stress manipulation had an effect on the participants stress levels at the end of the experiment.

Second and most important, the there was a significant main effect in the interaction between

activity one and activity two [F (1, 64) = 5.03, p< .03, N²= .07], Indicating that when stress

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manipulation was matched with the second activity manipulation, there was an effect on

participants stress levels at the end of the experiment. Because of these results the

interactional hypothesis was supported.

A follow up ANOVA was conducted to show the significance that the two levels of the

dependent variable had in activity one. The follow up ANOVA test for the stress condition in

activity one showed a significant main effect in the second activity manipulation [F (1, 32) =

3.67, p<.07, N²=.10]. However, the follow up ANOVA test for the control group (bedtime

routine condition) in activity one did not show a significant main effect in the second activity

manipulation (Pet condition and map condition)[F (1, 32) = 1.36, p<.25, N²=.04]. An Anova was

also ran between the categorical independent variable (male, female) and continuous variable

(stress level or anthropomorphism.) The data was transformed in order to run this test [p-value

= 0.173] in the difference between stress and gender manipulation, [p-value = 0.263] for the

anthropomorphism and gender.

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Male Female FemaleMaleFigure 1.1: Relationship between stress levels after the condition of writing about one’s pet and gender. 5 being higher stress levels and -5 being lower.

Figure 1.2: Relationship between anthropomorphism levels and gender. 3 being more anthropomorphic (adding human characteristics to pet) and -2 being less.


Discussion

The purpose of conducting this study as stated before was to see the relationship between

pets and their effects on stress in individuals who own pets. This can also compare with a pets

ability to fulfill social needs along with many other benefits tied into general healthy well-being.

Each hypothesis was upheld at the end of this study. Participants stress levels lowered/ stayed

neutral when asked to write about their pet and they had higher stress levels when asked to

write about stress and not write about their pet proving the first simple hypothesis to be true.

There wasn’t any effect on participants and stress levels who were assigned to the control

group (manipulation: bed time writing) and then either pet or map condition, which proved the

second simple hypothesis true too. The interactional hypothesis for this study that, “stress

responses will be a function of an interaction between stress manipulation (stress condition or

control/bedtime routine) and the second activity manipulation (pet condition or map

condition)” was supported. This also shows trends in the research already done and has the

ability to uphold all their findings also due to the general nature of stress.

When testing to see if there would be a significant difference between the gender of the

individual and the amount that their pet relieves the stress showed no significant difference.

When looking at the means (figure 1.1) you can tell that there is little difference between the

levels of stress after the manipulation of writing about one’s pet. There is also no significance

between gender and the level of anthropomorphism (figure 1.2.)

This study’s intent was to prove that pet ownership could prove helpful in stress reduction,

while the original study’s theory was to find pets can aid in social needs fulfillment. Both studies

intent was to find the health befits that stem off of negative feelings being decreased and how

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being a pet owner can help individuals, which is what made them so similar. We know now

from this study that pets can provide relief from when someone who owns a pet is stressed.

This may prove as to why people bring pets into the university when final exam time comes.

Also, it may prove one reason as to why people decide to own pets and how pet ownership can

be beneficial to one’s health and mental well-being because constant long lasting stress is

known to cause problems with blood pressure, blood sugar, cardio vascular issues, and many

other health issues.

In this study there is not a high amount of power in terms of validity since this study since it

did not have all of the participants necessary. With a medium effect size of .01 for activity one

that this study turned out to have there should have been 200 participants used in this study to

provide adequate power. There was also a medium effect size for the interactional analysis

of .07 and this study had only 68 participants meaning the results found could have been found

due to sheer luck. This could be a reason why there was not a large effect size found in the

results. The instruments used for this study were relatively reliable. The reliability for SACL, the

stress scale, had a Cronbach’s Alpha of .78. There was no reliability data found for the SACL

from Mackay et al (1988.) Nonetheless, there is evidence of internal consistency by studies

using factor analysis. The pet anthropomorphism scale used was moderately reliable with a

Cronbach’s Alpa of .76 in the current study and had a Cronbach’s Alpha of .85 from Albert &

Bulcroft (1988). The results were consistent with the theory stress levels depend whether

participants write about their pet or write/draw a map of campus. There were no significant

differences between the results of the original study and this study because both studies

supported each of its hypotheses.

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References

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Friedmann & Thomas, (1995). Social 1% vs. 7%, respectively exclusion. Personality and Social Psychology

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Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0024506

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560-567. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.345.365

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