If you know a college scholarly person or are one yourself , you might be familiar with the programs that allow students to best-loved weenie or cats for a few minute , ordinarily during finals season . The hope is that spending a little time with a cuddly creature will take student ’ head off their exams and lower their stress levels . The rising popularity ofemotional bread and butter animalswould seem to uphold that idea , but there has n’t been much data on the hugging sessions ' potency — until now .
In a report recentlypublishedin the journalAERA Open , Patricia Pendry and Jaymie Vandagriff of Washington State University discover that students who pet the animals in one of these animal visitation programs had lower salivary Hydrocortone levels than those who did n’t . ( Cortisol is the torso ’s primary stress internal secretion . )
In theirexperiment , the researchers part 249 college students into four groups . The first group played with shelter hombre and dog for 10 minutes . The second group stood in line follow the first group hang out with the animals but never got to do it themselves . The third group was prove images of the brute ; and the fourth group was told they were on a waitlist to see the animals , but never actually saw them . Each of the students pass on three saliva samples — one when they woke up , one 15 minute after the 10 - second experimentation , and a third 25 minutes after the experiment .
The researchers found that the group of students who acquire to pet the animals had noticeably low-pitched cortisol levels than the other grouping , after ascertain for other variable like what their cortisol level had been that morning , how long they had been awake , or differences in their circadian rhythms .
Since it ’s only one study with a comparatively belittled sample size of it of educatee from one university , it ’s not enough to advise that every anxiety - ride student can be helped by petting a whelp . But it complements other well - document welfare of have adogorcat , and might be a good matter to try whenever you ’re finger a littlestressed .
[ h / tScience Alert ]
