12 August 2024
After the last two posts which discussed serious concerns with the framing of depression-as-mental-illness, and the psychiatrisation of everyday suffering and distress as ‘mental illness’, I thought you might appreciate a somewhat lighter topic relating to human psychology. It just so happens that this one is very close to my heart, as a lifelong dog lover and recent adoptive dog-mum of this cheeky fellow:
Pretty much anyone who has grown up with a dog can remember turning to their canine companion for comfort, reassurance and encouragement. When the kids at school are being mean to you, or you’re grounded for bad behaviour, or you missed out on selection for the soccer team, or failed an important exam, your dog still thinks you’re the greatest thing on two legs (of course, you’d be even better on four…).
When my son was in Sydney Children’s Hospital for an extended stay, the highlight of each long and trauma-punctuated week was the therapy dog visit. Trained handlers would walk several calm, friendly and very child-tolerant dogs through the wards. Children who were well enough would whoop with delight and leap from their beds to get their fix of canine cuddles. The really sick kids could invite the handlers of the smaller dogs to lift them up onto their beds, where they would dispense the best therapy known to humankind: a loving lick.
It’s just obvious to dog people, that spending time with their furry friend makes them feel better.
But hey, scientists gonna science. And I must confess, my inner nerd does get off on reading studies in which boffins figure out how a commonly-observed phenomenon works. So let’s take a look at two studies that provide fascinating insights into the positive impact that interacting with dogs has on humans’ ability to relax, concentrate, think and plan.
Chillin’ with canines: The effect of interacting with dogs on human brain activity
The first study was conducted in South Korea, a country infamous for – ahem – an entirely different type of interaction with dogs that is, happily, currently being legislated out of existence.
Thirty adults aged in their 20s to 40s, comprising both pet owners and non-pet owners, were recruited to interact in eight different ways with an assistance dog, while wearing a wireless EEG device that measured their brainwave patterns during each activity. (That is, the human wore the EEG device, not the dog. Personally, I’d like to see the dog’s brainwave patterns too, but that’s just me.) Participants also filled out brief questionnaires assessing their mood and emotional states, and stress level, after each activity.
Out of the eight types of human-dog interaction – meeting, engaging in play, feeding, massage (that’s the human massaging the dog, not vice versa), grooming, taking a selfie with the dog, hugging, and walking – it was play, walking, massage and grooming that evoked the largest changes in brainwave activity.
(A prize for the best caption representing the dog’s perspective will be awarded; leave your snarkiest handiwork in the comments section below.)
Specifically, playing and walking with the dog increased several types of brainwave activity in the prefrontal and frontal lobes that have been reported in previous studies to reflect a state of relaxation, emotional stability, and reduced mental stress. These types of brainwave activity are also associated, interestingly enough, with increased ability to concentrate in a relaxed manner, improved memory and learning ability, creative thinking, problem-solving ability and cognitive judgement.
While massaging the dog, participants had increased brainwave activity of types previously associated with alertness, focus, and attentiveness. Both massaging and grooming the dog evoked brainwave activity associated with maintaining a state of relaxed concentration.
Participants self-reported significantly lower fatigue, depression and stress after engaging in each of the eight types of interaction with the dog. The most positive mood states were reported after feeding, massaging, and hugging the dog. Walking with the dog evoked the highest levels of subjective feelings of being “comfortable” and “natural”, while massaging the dog led to the greatest self-reports of feeling relaxed.
While the primary interest of the researchers who conducted this study was to provide data to refine the composition of specific animal-assisted interventions (AAI) in health, social work and educational settings, their findings have obvious relevance to all current and prospective pet guardians. If you have a tricky problem to solve, or want to prepare your mind for a period of study or learning, first take Fido out for a walk or game of fetch. If you are feeling stressed and mentally ‘scattered’, massage or groom your pooch. And if you’re feeling flat, give your dog a hug (assuming your dog likes hugs; our previous dog, Comet, was a cool customer who didn’t go in much for hugs, whereas our new rescue pooch, Tonka, is a cuddlemonster who has never yet encountered a lap he doesn’t want to climb into… and seeing that he’s a rottweiler x American Staffordshire terrier who will probably grow to around 35 kg [roughly 75 lb], this is going to get tricky.)
The authors don’t weigh in why interacting with dogs evokes changes in brain activity in humans, but I think it’s implied in the opening paragraph of their paper’s introduction:
“Dogs were domesticated more than 30,000 years ago [1], and have assisted humans in numerous tasks, including hunting, working, herding, and guarding throughout history. Dogs can communicate with people [2]. They have been faithful friends to humans and share emotions beyond that of an efficient assistant.”
Psychophysiological and emotional effects of human–Dog interactions by activity type: An electroencephalogram study
Our brainwave activity changes to more closely match that of other people with whom we feel connected (a phenomenon dubbed interbrain synchrony). So does the brain activity of members of other social species, such as bats. But dogs have been close companions and assistants to humans for so many generations of each species, that I think it’s highly likely that cross-species interbrain synchrony may occur between us. Like I said before, the next experiment I want to see, is one where they put the EEG device on the dog, too. Heck, they make one for bats.
‘Evidence-based stress management’ vs patting dogs
In the second study, 309 US college students were randomised to participate in one of three four-week academic stress management programs:
- An ASM condition which consisted of a series of evidence-based academic stress management workshops, comprising “didactic content presentations (e.g., slide presentations featuring evidence-based approaches toward stress management delivered by a master-level health educator), and guided activities focused on enhancing self-regulation (e.g., progressive muscle relaxation, deep breathing, meditation, replacing negative self-talk with positive self-talk), and metacognitive skill training (e.g., time management, test-taking skills, study planning, prioritization exercises).”
- A human–animal interaction condition (HAI-O) in which students engaged in animal-assisted activities (AAAs) with registered therapy dogs and their handlers. Students were instructed in relaxation and meditation techniques, and were encouraged to pat the dogs throughout the activities, and to mindfully “experience” the animal they were interacting with. No evidence-based academic stress management content was presented to these students.
- An enhanced human–animal interaction condition (HAI-E) in which students spent equal amounts of time participating in a cut-down version of the evidence-based stress management program listed in 1., and interacting with the therapy dogs and their handlers as in condition 2.
Participants completed a standardised assessment of executive function before they commenced their assigned four-week program (‘baseline’), and repeated this assessment one week after completing the program (‘post-test’), and once again after a six-week hiatus (‘follow-up’). The test, the Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Function–Adult (BRIEF-A), measures participants’ metacognition – the capacity for solving problems systematically using skills involving planning, organisation, and holding information in working memory – and the ability to regulate behavioural and emotional responses to challenging situations.
Executive function is an umbrella term for all the skills we need to plan, organise, prioritise, manage our time efficiently, motivate ourselves, control our emotions and impulses so we can think before acting, concentrate and memorise – in other words, the major cognitive skills that are necessary for students to succeed in college, and indeed for adults to succeed in life.
Executive function is positively correlated with the ability to cope with challenge, and inversely associated with symptoms of psychopathology. Let’s just say that ‘dysregulated airport chick’, whom we met in last week’s post, looks like she’s suffering from poor executive function (among other things!):
Because the researchers were particularly interested in identifying a sub-group of students for whom animal-assisted interventions might be of most benefit, their recruitment process was structured so as to recruit a sample containing at least 30 per cent participants who were considered ‘at-risk’ of academic failure, either because they were academically deficient, had a diagnosed mental condition or disorder, had considered suicide or self-harm, and/or were receiving classroom accommodations for learning disorders.
(Reflecting on my own university experience, I cannot recall encountering a single student who received classroom accommodations for anything other than clear-cut medical conditions such as hearing impairment; if you were feeling suicidal, you were expected to take yourself off to the student counsellor rather than telling your lecturer all about it; having a “diagnosed mental condition or disorder” meant you were probably in a psych ward rather than a lecture hall; and the attrition of students who couldn’t cope with academic demands was not only anticipated, it was openly discussed in the first class of each course – as in, the lecturer would instruct students to smile at the person seated to their left and their right, and then glibly state something along the lines of “One out of the three of you won’t be here by the end of the semester because you’re not bright enough or you can’t handle the workload.” Cue the ‘Gen X was built diff’ video…
… or just read El Gato Malo’s homage to the benign neglect of 1970s childhood – a long-lost era when ‘parent’ was a noun, not a verb.)
Anyhow…
Students who participated in any of the three versions of the stress management program experienced improvements in executive function at post-test and follow-up, indicated by the lines on the graphs below, sloping down from the left to the right. (In this assessment, a higher score denotes more dysfunction, so a lower score is a better outcome.) But, rather remarkably, among the students who had been rated ‘at-risk’ upon enrolment, those assigned to the human-animal interaction only group (HAI-O) had significantly greater improvements in executive function than those assigned to either the academic stress management (ASM) condition, or the mixed ASM-animal interaction condition (HAI-E):
Look closely at the steep drops in the solid orange lines, which indicate the improvements in overall executive function, and its two subscales, metacognition and behavioural regulation, in the at-risk students who participated in the human-animal interaction only condition (remember, a lower score denotes better executive function). These students started out with either the highest or second-highest level of dysfunction in their overall executive function and its subscales, and ended up with better overall executive function, metacognition and behavioural regulation, both at post-test and six-week follow-up, than any of the other student groups, including those not considered at-risk.
Searching for an explanation for their rather surprising findings, the researchers theorised that while the content of the evidence-based stress management presentations may have “only served to conjure thoughts of stressful situations or realities without providing a means of remedying the source of the stress”, interacting with the dogs may have provided a welcome respite from negative thoughts, and facilitated a relaxed, calm state conducive to the development of executive function skills. Furthermore, they speculated that the at-risk students may have stood to benefit most from the social support provided by the dogs, and that the presence of the dogs may have facilitated greater connection with these students’ peers, offering further support for crucial executive function skill development.
Huh. So hanging out with dogs whilst practising meditation and visualisation, helps people develop executive function skills more effectively than learning stress management skills from a “master-level health educator”. I bet the dogs cost less, too.
Dogz helpz your feelz
Reflecting on this study, I recalled a reader question in relation to last week’s post:
“In practical terms, how to self-regulate without suppressing emotions?”
In my answer to this question, I referred to co-regulation, in which an attuned adult responds empathically but calmly to your emotional upset, and helps you work through the distress by finding a healthy outlet, and facilitating problem-solving. But can you co-regulate with a dog? According to proponents of the polyvagal theory of emotional dysregulation, yes, you can.
(As an aside, while these days I do most of my work with clients online, back when I lived in Sydney, our previous rescue dog Comet used to sit in on many of my in-person consultations – with the client’s permission, of course. It was remarkable to observe how rapidly clients relaxed, and began to feel safe enough to disclose very private and sometimes distressing details about their lives, when he was present. Whenever a client began to talk about anything upsetting, he would instantly jump up from his favourite spot on the rug, pad over to sit in front of them, and rest his head on their lap. He was, hands down – or is that paws down? – the best assistant I could have asked for!)
Summing up, interacting with dogs helps humans feel calmer, focus better, and develop the skills needed to plan, organise, prioritise, control impulses, and regulate behavioural and emotional responses to challenging situations. How much better off would we all be, if doctors prescribed pooches, instead of Prozac?
Final note: If you’re tempted to welcome a dog into your life after reading this article, please adopt, don’t buy. Around 44,000 dogs and 50,000 cats are killed in Australia each year by councils, shelters, and rescue groups. Every time you buy an animal from a breeder, you’re condemning an abandoned pet to death. There are breed rescue clubs if you really want a purebred, there are many nationwide rescue services, and of course your local council pound and dog rescue will sadly, always be overflowing with dogs seeking loving families.
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