People and Their Pets: A Relational Perspective on Interpersonal Complementarity and Attachment in Companion Animal Owners

The current study evaluated the interpersonal circumplex as a theoretical model of companion animal personality and companion animal attachment. To this end, the study surveyed 266 companion animal guardians (owners)-89 reporting their most recent pet a cat and 177 reporting their most recent pet a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Society & animals 2007, Vol.15 (2), p.169-189
Main Authors: Bauer, Amy, Woodward, Lucinda
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attachment
Cats
COMPANION ANIMAL ATTACHMENT
COMPLEMENTARITY
Cultural studies
Dogs
Emotions
Empirical tests
INTERPERSONAL CIRCUMPLEX
Interpersonal relations
INTERPERSONAL STYLE
Pets
Social psychology
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The current study evaluated the interpersonal circumplex as a theoretical model of companion animal personality and companion animal attachment. To this end, the study surveyed 266 companion animal guardians (owners)-89 reporting their most recent pet a cat and 177 reporting their most recent pet a dog-to assess the relationships between interpersonal complementarity and companion animal attachment. The study used MANOVA to evaluate differences in interpersonal traits for cats, dogs, and people who self-identified that cats or dogs were their ideal pets. Results indicated that cats-and people who identified cats as their ideal pet-were more hostile in their orientation than were dogs or people who preferred dogs. In hierarchical regression-analysis, the study also confirmed the positive relationship between interpersonal complementarity and companion-animal attachment. Reprinted by permission of Brill Academic Publishers
ISSN:1063-1119
1568-5306
1063-1119
DOI:10.1163/156853007X187117