Why Do We Keep Pets?
In 2014, Americans spent an estimated \58$ billion on pets and untold hours caring for them. For 50 years, psychologists have been trying to unravel the appeals of animal companionship in hopes of deciphering just why we invest so much in these creatures. In the process, anthrozoologists - scientists who study human-animal relationships - have discovered a window into human sociality more broadly. Our interactions with animals can be useful models for understanding how issues of identity, nurturing, support, and attachment play out in a relationship. "It's all about human psychology," says anthrozoologist Pauleen Bennett. "Pets help us fill our need for social connectedness." The more we uncover about our companion animals, the more we may learn about our human attachments as well.
Part of our attraction to animal companionship is innate. A study has revealed that toddlers one to three years old spend more time interacting with live animals than they do with inanimate toys when given a choice between the two. Humans even have specialized brain cells for recognizing animal life. Research has found neurons in the amygdala, an area involved in emotions, that respond preferentially to animal images. This finding hints at a neural basis for the powerful emotional reactions animals elicit from us.
Many animals seem to tap into humans' attraction to the adorable, a drive that also may motivate good parenting. Behavioral scientists have long noticed that humans seem to have inborn, positive responses to beings with characteristics typical of human infants - such as wide eyes, broad foreheads, and large head-to-body ratios. This suggests that humans are primed to attend to fragile, young infants, who may require greater care than other beings. Clearly, baby animals exploit the same instinctive responses in us that human infants elicit.
Such findings lend credence to the idea that our interest in pets stems from what biologist E. O. Wilson has called "biophilia," an inherent tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes. However, Wilson has also acknowledged that our interest in animals depends on personal and cultural experience. For example, dogs are popular in many Western countries but are considered unclean in traditional Islamic communities.
Indeed, psychologist Harold A. Herzog has argued that pet keeping is driven principally by culture. Assessing the fluctuating popularity of dog breeds, he and his colleagues found no relationship between a breed's health, longevity, or behavioral traits, such as aggressiveness or trainability, and its popularity. Instead, they argued, the trends in top dogs were erratic and seemed to shift suddenly, as if driven by fashion. They further discovered that movies featuring specific dog breeds would boost that pooch's popularity for up to a decade. Extending these findings to other species, Herzog posited that people may keep pets simply because other people do, reflecting our penchant for social imitation.
But even if imitation plays a role in their choices, most people profess to wanting pets for companionship. This friendship then sustains the connection despite the costs of ownership.
An animal can also serve as a source of comfort. In a 1980 study, biologist Erika Friedmann reported that pet owners were more likely to be alive a year after a heart attack than were people who did not have a companion animal - possibly because the animals afforded some form of stress relief. Yet efforts to replicate such findings have had mixed results, and animal-assisted therapy has been criticized for overstating the ability of animals to ameliorate mental illness. Nevertheless, some people may gain psychological support from their pets and keep them for exactly this reason.
A pet owner may "read" a response into an animal companion's behavior regardless of the animal's intentions. Yet such projections are precisely what make this field ripe for psychology: they reveal our own social needs and desires. Animal relationships may someday provide useful comparison points to human connections - a benchmark for investigating empathy, caring, and even decision making. That these creatures can fit many molds while being so different from us makes these friendships uniquely valuable.
The study of animal companionship is still in its infancy. But without this research, we could not begin to fathom the rich and varied range of relationships that make up human experience.
DAISY YUHAS, Scientific AMERICAN MIND