Feline fanatics, consider yourselves vindicated! Research says the “crazy cat lady” trope is a myth.
A new study found that cat owners are no more depressed, anxious, or prone to relationship problems than dog owners or people without pets, debunking the myth of the “crazy cat lady.”
Cat owners were found to be more sensitive to sounds of distress from cats (and other animals) than non-owners. Cat owners were particularly attuned to sad “meows.”
These are just some of the facts that came out during the study, conducted by a group of researchers from UCLA, the University of Oxford, and Aarhus University in Denmark.
Study and Results
The research group looked at emotional responses and self-reported rates of anxiety, depression, and close relationships among UCLA undergraduate students — 264 who owned pets, and 297 who did not. They found that cat owners have the same levels of loneliness, depression, and anxiety as everyone else.
The investigation actually began as an offshoot of research on parenting behavior. People were reporting that their physiological responses to puppies (like increased heart rates and faster reaction times) were similar to their physiological responses to human babies, said Christine Parsons, a co-author of the study and associate professor of the Interacting Minds Center at Aarhus University in Denmark.
“Cats are so familiar to us and we have such strong relationships with them,” Parsons told Insider. She said that realization was a “light bulb moment” in their research on caregiving behaviors.
The study found that pet owners were more likely to be saddened by a dog’s whimper or a cat’s plaintive meow than non-pet owners.
“These sounds are very effective at capturing our attention. If you find yourself responding very strongly, that’s natural,” said Parsons, who doesn’t own a pet but loves both cats and dogs.
Predictably, cat owners were the most upset by feline cries, compared to dog owners or non-pet owners who were less affected by the meows. However, researchers found overall, cat people aren’t any more emotional than the rest of us.
The “crazy cat lady” trope is a myth
Although there’s a widespread stereotype of cat owners, especially women, as eccentric, chronically single, and distinctively neurotic, researchers found no evidence to support that image.
In fact, cat owners were not more likely to self-report depression, anxiety, or interpersonal relationship problems than other groups. Although the data was self-reported, Parsons said it used standardized methods of determining mental health.
Parsons said debunking the cat lady myth wasn’t an initial goal of the study, but researchers decided to look into mental health patterns among pet owners because they already had access to that information.
