Null effects of therapy dog interaction on adolescent anxiety during a laboratory-based social evaluative stressor

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives

Animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) are increasingly popular as treatments to reduce anxiety. However, there is little empirical evidence testing the mechanisms of action in AAIs, especially among adolescents. We examined whether two possible mechanisms, social interaction and/or physical contact with a therapy dog, might reduce anxiety during a social stressor.

Design and Methods

To test these mechanisms, we randomly assigned 75 adolescents with low, middle, and high levels of social anxiety to complete a laboratory-based social evaluative stressor in one of three conditions: social interaction with a therapy dog (no physical interaction), social plus physical interaction with a therapy dog, or no interaction with a therapy dog. We measured self-reported anxiety and autonomic reactivity during the social stressor to assess the effects of contact with a therapy dog.

Results and Conclusions

We found no evidence that the presence of a real dog, with or without the opportunity to touch it, reduced anxiety or autonomic reactivity or improved cognitive performance relative to the presence of a stuffed dog in the control condition, regardless of levels of preexisting social anxiety.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03249116.

KEYWORDS:

• Social anxiety
• animal-assisted therapy
• human-animal interaction
• social stress
• emotion regulation

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the therapy dog teams from Tufts Paws for People for participating in this study.

Author contributions

M. K. Mueller, E. Anderson, and H. L. Urry designed the study collaboratively. M. K. Mueller and E. K. King performed the experiments. H. L. Urry and E. C. Anderson analyzed the data and M. K. Mueller assisted with interpretation. M.K. Mueller drafted the overall manuscript, H. L. Urry drafted the results, and all authors contributed to writing and editing. All authors approved the final manuscript for submission.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The design and analysis plan for this study were preregistered on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/5nqus?view_only=1d714b919364402fbb88adb35f9dc945), and all data, analysis code, and study materials are publicly available via https://osf.io/w7k8p/?view_only=965f3d7390d7434895216fe8b88a2160. We report deviations from our preregistered protocol in the Supplementary Materials.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, award number R03HD091892. REDCap use supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Award Number UL1TR002544. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.