Pet Ownership And Perceived Well Being

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The researcher’s hypothesis regarding pet ownership and perceived well-being was not supported by the data. Pet ownership was not related to perceived well-being, even after controlling for the gender of participants. The results of this study concurred with the results from Staats and colleagues’ (2006) study. Both studies were unable to find a significant relationship between pet ownership and perceived well-being. However, unlike Staats and colleagues’ (2006) study, this study did not obtain information on whether participants subjectively believed that pet ownership would improve their well-being. Future studies should incorporate this factor in order to understand the effect of positive psychology.
The results of this study conflicted with the other previous researches. As indicated by Jorm and colleagues (2002), pet ownership was associated with longer survival rates in patients who had experienced a heart attack. Unlike coronary patients, the participants of this study did not suffer any medical conditions, and not to the researcher’s knowledge, ever experienced a heart attack. Perhaps patients who experienced a heart attack were more attached to their pets as a form of distraction from any lingering effects of the episode.
Further, in the study conducted by McConnell and colleagues (2011), it was revealed that pet owners experienced greater perceived well-being, and were not as vulnerable to feelings of loneliness. McConnell and colleagues (2011) had incorporated
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