Companion Animal Care Articles used with permission from All-Creatures.org

Marc Bekoff looks at research that correlates life satisfaction and cohabitating with an animal companion as well as personality traits related to cat and dog companionship.

How Dogs and Cats Support Our Well-Being
From Marc Bekoff, Ph.D., PsychologyToday.com
June 2025

Images from Canva

Key points

• A new study offers strong support for the hypothesis that pets increase human satisfaction and well-being.


• Pets do so similarly to family and friends and to some extent they are even a substitute for these people.


• Cat carers appear to be more open and dog carers appear to be more extroverted, agreeable, and less neurotic.


• Pet carers in general appear to be more open, conscientious, and extroverted than non-pet carers.

This post is in response to Scientific Proof That Pets Can Make You Happy By Sebastian Ocklenburg, Ph.D.

Searching the web leads to countless studies that show that pets (a.k.a. companion animals) have various positive effects on many aspects of people's quality of life. Of course, this isn't so for all people.¹ However, a new open access study by Michael W. Gmeiner and Adeline Gschwandtner titled "The Value of Pets: The Quantifiable Impact of Pets on Life Satisfaction" based on substantial data shows, "a pet companion increases life satisfaction by 3 to 4 points on a scale of 1 to 7... and having a pet companion is worth up to £70,000 (about $94,000) a year in terms of life satisfaction, similar to values obtained in the literature for meeting with friends and relatives on a regular basis."

Here, I expand on Sebastian Ocklenburg's essay by comparing some differences between dog carers and cat carers, and also from benefiting from emailing with Gmeiner for clarification of a few of their other results. Gmeiner and Gschwandtner's data also line up with the discussion in Stanley Coren's essay "Is Our Relationship to Dogs Friendship or Family?" posted yesterday.

How the research was conducted

Here is a summary of some of the massive amounts of data collected by the researchers that provide causal estimates—not merely correlations—of how happy pets can make us. The authors begin with a wide-ranging and highly valuable summary of scientific literature that focuses on how pets affect human well-being and self-esteem. Many are based on correlations between different variables and reported assessments of well-being. They also importantly note, "The positive effects of pets, however, could be offset by risks and problems associated with them, such as allergies, parasites, physical injuries, infections, financial stress and emotional distress (Smith, 2012; Brooks et al., 2018; Hui et al. 2020; Applebaum et al., 2021), making this study that aims to estimate the ‘net pet effect’, even more important." (References can be found in the original essay.)

Their data are based on 2,617 observations from 1980 households—some individuals appear in different analyses—and 769 unique individuals aged 16-99. Life satisfaction was measured from responses to the following question: "Please choose the number which you feel best describes how dissatisfied or satisfied you are with the following aspects of your current situation: Life overall." They used a seven-point scale with one denoting that a person is not satisfied at all and seven denoting that a person is completely satisfied. They also used the "Big Five" personality traits, Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeability, and Neuroticism (OCEAN).

Because "social capital" is one of the most important determinants of life satisfaction, they asked questions about an individual's relationship with neighbors because they are a good proxy for social capital. Physical health was determined by asking, “In general, would you say your health is: poor”, and one that asks whether the respondent is long-time sick or disabled. Mental health was assessed by the answer to the question: “During the past four weeks, how much of the time have you had any of the following problems with your work or other regular daily activities as a result of any emotional problems (such as feeling depressed or anxious)” measured from 1 (all of the time) to 5 (none of the time)."

What did this study reveal?

The relationship between age and life satisfaction is shown in this figure.

The graph is often called the "life satisfaction smile" because older females and males tend to show greater satisfaction after around the mid-40s, when mid-life crises are most common.

Interestingly, when the presence of companion dogs and cats is considered, the results showed that the life satisfaction of dog and cat carers was lower than general life satisfaction, similar to what other studies have reported. The researchers also found that the life satisfaction of cat and dog carers was not significantly different (their Table 2), which is similar to the results of other studies. They write, "Even though on average the mental and physical health of pet carers and non-pet carers appear to be very similar, it could be that lower life satisfaction of pet carers is driven by other dimensions of mental health not captured by our data, making it even more important to account for the direction of causality."

There also were differences in personality traits. They report that cat carers "appear to be more open [while] dog carers appear to be more extroverted, agreeable and less neurotic." When compared to people living without dogs or cats, pet carers are more open, conscientious, and extroverted and also are more likely to be married with more children living with them.

The researchers also report positive and significant monetary effects of pet companionship. The overall monetary values they report can be as high as £70,000 (about $94,000) for both cats and dogs, and dogs had larger health benefits than cats. They note, "It may be that a larger value for dogs is expected. However, one needs to consider that dogs also have higher ‘maintenance costs’ compared to cats."

I found these data to be a bit confusing, and Michael Gmeiner clarified them for me by writing: "It's an estimate of how much income would need to go up to have the same effect on life satisfaction as owning a pet.'" (See note 2 for more details.)

Coda: Who's actually taking care of who?

This study shows overall that dogs and cats, and perhaps other companion animals, are good for many people. The researchers also note that pet companionship can potentially be viewed as a substitute for family relationships. It remains possible that other companion animals are positively associated with life satisfaction, but they didn't have enough information for animals such as fish, hamsters, rabbits, reptiles, or horses.

All in all, the researchers write:

The value of pets for their human caregivers appears to be very high, comparable to the one that has been obtained in other studies for meeting with friends and relatives on a regular basis or even with being married (Clark & Oswald, 2002; Powdthavee, 2008). We have used throughout the paper the term ‘human caregivers’ but in light of the results obtained in the present study the question can be raised regarding who is actually taking care of who."

I hope others will continue to study how various companion animals increase human life satisfaction and well-being and how robust this relationship truly is. They are not claiming that dogs and cats have positive effects on all humans, but for some, perhaps many, they really do help their humans along both psychologically and monetarily.

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References

1) There are far too many reports especially in popular media that suggest that living with a companion animal is good for everyone. This is not so and it's important to emphasize that living with a dog, cat, or other nonhuman companion doesn't work for everyone. This does not mean it's not good for many people but it's essential to know that it's not a panacea. See for example: Do Pets Really Unconditionally Love and Unwind Us?; Hal Herzog, Does Having a Pet Really Benefit Your Mental Health?; _____. Are Pets as Good for Us as We Think They Are?

2) He also wrote: "I will acknowledge the number is high. To be precise we only estimate the effect for a subpopulation, the type of person who (1) would not own a pet if their neighbours did not ask them to look over their pet and (2) does own a pet if their neighbours do ask them. This is probably the type of person who really likes pets, but doesn't realize it until they care for neighbours pets. So we are estimating the effect for a subpopulation that really likes pets."

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Article originally published on PsychologyToday.com:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/202505/the-positive-value-of-dogs-and-cats-on-human-well-being

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: November 7, 2025
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