Do Pets Help With Anxiety? What the Research Shows

Ask anyone with a dog whether the dog helps their anxiety and you will usually get a quick yes. The research is less clear. Touching an animal for ten minutes seems to calm the body a little. Living with one for years is much harder to pin down. Looking at a picture of one does the least.

Below is what the studies measured, who was tested, and how big the effects were.

Petting an animal lowers cortisol briefly

In 2019, Pendry and Vandagriff ran a randomized trial with 249 university students. One group spent ten minutes petting cats and dogs. Afterward their salivary cortisol, a common marker of the stress response, was lower than in the three comparison groups. ¹

The p-values sit close to the usual .05 cutoff, and the authors call the benefit "momentary." The design is solid and the effect is small. The participants were ordinary students, so the result says nothing about people with an anxiety disorder.

An older pilot study points the same way. Barker and colleagues had 20 healthcare workers spend time with a therapy dog, and their serum and salivary cortisol dropped. ² With only 20 people, the authors themselves call it a pilot.

Oxytocin, a hormone linked to bonding, is the popular explanation for why touch helps. One widely cited review proposes it as the mechanism, but its title calls the role "possible." ³ Treat it as a hypothesis.

Photos do much less

In the Pendry trial, the slideshow group looked at images of the same animals the hands-on group petted. Their cortisol was higher than the hands-on group's. ¹

Ein and colleagues tested the question directly. They had 120 people do a stressful mental arithmetic task while looking at one of six things:

• a photo of their own pet
• an unfamiliar animal
• a supportive person
• a stranger
• a nature scene
• nothing

The photo of their own pet did not reduce the stress response. Afterward, though, those participants said the picture made them feel more relaxed. The authors concluded that active interaction with a pet may be required. ⁴

So people felt calmer while their bodies showed no change, and both results are real. A photo you love is a fine way to feel a little better. It has no tested effect on the stress response.

What cute images do change

Nittono and colleagues showed people pictures of baby animals and found that it made their behavior more careful and narrowed their attention on a following task. ⁵ The study measured focus and did not measure stress hormones. Cuteness seems to grab attention, which may be useful when your mind is spinning.

Myrick surveyed 6,795 people who watch cat videos online. Viewers reported more energy, more positive emotion and fewer negative emotions afterward. ⁶ It was a self-selected survey with no control group, so people who like cat videos reported that cat videos make them feel good. That is believable and weak evidence.

Owning a pet shows no reliable benefit

If petting helps for a few minutes, living with an animal might be expected to help all day. The research does not show that. Herzog's 2011 review found the case for a general "pet effect" on health far weaker than the headlines suggested. ⁷ Newer studies point the same way:

• Chopik and colleagues (2025): 767 people followed three times in May 2020 in a pre-registered study. Pet ownership was "not reliably associated with well-being," and the result barely changed by species, number of pets, or how close owners felt to them. Owners listed both benefits and costs when asked in their own words. ⁸
• Denis-Robichaud and colleagues (2022): 1,500 Canadians surveyed. Before adjusting, pet owners looked worse off: lonelier, more stressed, more anxious. After accounting for income, health and similar factors, the differences disappeared. ⁹
• Ogata and colleagues (2023): 4,237 people followed through the first two years of the pandemic. Dog owners saw bigger drops in stress and loneliness, but after adjusting for confounders the data did not support a protective effect of pet ownership on stress. ¹⁰
• Moshfeghinia and colleagues (2025): 21 studies and 159,322 people pooled. Pet ownership overall made no significant difference to depression risk (OR 1.03, 95% CI 0.995 to 1.07). Cat owners came out slightly worse (OR 1.06), and dog owners showed no significant effect. ¹¹

The last result covers depression, and the studies are observational. People who are already struggling may be more likely to get a cat, so the data cannot show that cats cause depression. Ownership looks like no simple fix in either direction.

What to do with this

Pets are not bad for you. A dog that gets you out of the house every morning matters even if it never shows up as a cortisol number. In practice:

If you have a pet, the benefit most likely comes from contact. Sit with them for a few minutes without your phone and notice the weight, the warmth and the breathing. That works as a grounding exercise, and it pairs well with 5-4-3-2-1 grounding or a few rounds of guided breathing. No study has tested that exact combination, so treat it as a habit to try.

If you do not have a pet, the studies that worked used short visits, so borrowing one is a fair test. Walk a friend's dog, sit with a neighbor's cat, or volunteer at a shelter. Adopting an animal is a ten-to-fifteen-year commitment with costs, allergies, and eventually grief, and the evidence does not support it as an anxiety treatment.

If you are far from your animal, or you lost them, a photo is unlikely to lower your cortisol the way contact does. It can still feel good, and it works as a cue to slow down and take a breath.

Daily pet photos

We also run dailypetphotos.com, which sends a new AI-made picture of your pet in a different scene each morning, free for the first week with no card. It is fun to look at. The studies above found no stress benefit from photos, so we make no anxiety claim for it.

When a pet is not enough

If anxiety keeps interfering with sleep, work or relationships, talk to a professional. A pet is a pleasant addition to care and does not replace it. Our anxiety self-test can give you a rough starting point before that conversation. For fast relief in a hard moment, grounding techniques and box breathing have more research behind them than any photo.

Research and References