Effect of Dog Presence on Stress Levels in Students under Psychological Strain: A Pilot Study

Abstract

As university students face many stressful situations, especially during the examination period, this study focused on the use of animal-assisted activities (AAAs) with a dog as a means of relieving students’ stress before a final exam. The aim was to determine whether a 10-min interaction with a dog affected subjectively evaluated stress and mood, objective blood pressure, and heart rate. Ninety-three female students (mean age = 22.5 years; standard deviation = 3.8 years) were divided into three groups according to their preference. The first group underwent AAAs (n = 26), the second group chose a relaxation technique (n = 28), and the last one was a control group (n = 39). Physiological values were measured using a pressure gauge and the subjective feelings of stress and mood were evaluated by the Likert scale 1–5. The AAA group showed significant improvement after 10 min of interaction in both mood and stress, with no change in heart rate and blood pressure. The remaining groups showed a significant decrease in blood pressure, but not in heart rate, with different evaluations of mood and stress. AAAs with a dog appear to be effective in improving students’ mood and stress without affecting their physiological parameters.

Exploring Dog-Assisted Interventions in Higher Education: Students’ Attitudes and Perceived Effects on Well-Being

“…Nevertheless, an effect on students’ physical well-being did not occur in this study. The influence dogs have on students’ physical well-being cannot be unambiguously answered, as some studies have linked DAI in higher education to improvements in health factors such as lower blood pressure and cortisol levels [ 32 , 42 , 43 , 81 ], while other studies have failed to confirm such effects [ 29 , 36 , 44 ].…”

“…Although providing this kind of intervention to college and university students is a fairly new undertaking [ 26 ], there is promising evidence that AAIs can, amongst others, result in higher ratings of momentary positive emotions, a reduction in stress-related negative emotions [ 27 , 28 ], psychological and physical markers of stress [ 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ], anxiety [ 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ], and homesickness while increasing their satisfaction with life, connectedness to campus [ 37 , 38 ], behavioral aspects of academic success [ 39 ], well-being and improving their social skills as well as their mood [ 29 , 33 , 40 ]. Furthermore, Daltry and Mehr [ 41 ] found that having animals on campus may promote the services offered by student counseling centers on campus, as a lot of students were unaware of them before implementing the AAI.…”

Specific and Non-specific Factors of Animal-Assisted Interventions Considered in Research: A Systematic Review

“…In this category, we included studies with control conditions where subjects were asked to sit and relax for a certain amount of time (Fiocco and Hunse, 2017 ; Machová et al, 2020a , b ). We found that nine studies controlled for relaxation as a non-specific factor.…”

“…While human–animal interaction was mentioned by several authors as a specific factor, human–animal interaction comprises a multitude of components. For example, several studies hypothesized that human–animal interaction can reduce stress (Fiocco and Hunse, 2017 ; Pan et al, 2019 ; Machová et al, 2020b ), but they did not specify how human–animal interaction leads to this possible stress-reducing effect. These rather vague factor hypotheses about human–animal interaction and AAIs reflect the current problem in the AAI research where the question of how AAIs work is still neglected (López-Cepero, 2020 ).…”

Animal-Assisted Interventions for the Improvement of Mental Health Outcomes in Higher Education Students: A Systematic Review of Randomised Controlled Trials

“…King [149] wrong study design Kobayashi et al [150] wrong outcomes Kronholz et al [151] wrong study design Kuzara et al [152] wrong outcomes Lacoff et al [153] wrong study design Lauriente et al [154] wrong study design Lephart et al [155] wrong study design Linden [156] criteria for inter-library loan not met Litwiller et al [157] wrong study design Machova et al [158] wrong study design Malakoff [159] wrong population…”