An investigation of the relationship between life satisfaction, empathic tendency and sense of loneliness of pet owners and non-pet owners

This study, it was aimed to examine the associations between life satisfaction, emphatic tendencies, and perception of loneliness in adults with and without pets. The participants of this research consist of adults ranging in age from 18 to 70 years old. The research included 349 participants, 163 women, and 186 men, from 37 different cities. Of the participants, 168 are pet owners, 85 are non-pet owners and 99 are former pet owners. Demographic Information Form, Life Satisfaction Scale, UCLA Loneliness Scale, and Empathic Tendency Scale were used to collect data for the study. The life satisfaction, empathic disposition, and loneliness perceptions of pet owners and non-pet owners were compared using an ANOVA test. As a result of this test, according to having a pet, life and empathic disposition scores do not show a significant difference. However, there was a significant difference in mean loneliness scores depending on whether or not you had a pet. The mean loneliness scores of participants who have pets are significantly higher than the mean loneliness scores of those who do not have pets or those who have had pets previously. Furthermore, according to the Pearson correlation analysis, it's observed that, as the participants' loneliness scores increased, their life satisfaction scores decreased, and as their empathic tendency scores increased, their life satisfaction scores also increased. It was observed that as the loneliness scores of the participants with pets increased, their empathic tendency scores decreased.