Rethinking human-animal relations: The critical role of social psychology

Abstract

People deeply value their social bonds with companion animals, yet routinely devalue other animals, considering them mere commodities to satisfy human interests and desires. Despite the inherently social and intergroup nature of these complexities, social psychology is long overdue in integrating human-animal relations in its theoretical frameworks. The present body of work brings together social psychological research advancing our understanding of: 1) the factors shaping our perceptions and thinking about animals as social groups, 2) the complexities involved in valuing (caring) and devaluing (exploiting) animals, and 3) the implications and importance of human-animal relations for human intergroup relations. In this article, we survey the diversity of research paradigms and theoretical frameworks developed within the intergroup relations literature that are relevant, perchance critical, to the study of human-animal relations. Furthermore, we highlight how understanding and rethinking human-animal relations will eventually lead to a more comprehensive understanding of many human intergroup phenomena.

Liking but Devaluing Animals: Emotional and Deliberative Paths to Speciesism

“…While philosophers have studied questions of how we treat and should treat animals for decades (e.g., Kagan, 2016;Regan, 1987;Singer, 1975), if not centuries (e.g., Bentham, 1780), psychologists have started to investigate the psychology of speciesism only in recent years (Amiot & Bastian, 2015;Caviola, Everett, & Faber, 2019;Dhont, Hodson, & Leite, 2016;Dhont, Hodson, Loughnan, & Amiot, 2019). Most of this research has focused on what we call anthropocentric speciesism: the fact that we value humans more than animals.…”

Human-Animal Studies: Remembering the Past, Celebrating the Present, Troubling the Future

“…DeMello's edited volume Teaching the Animal: Human-Animal Studies Across the Disciplines (2010) provides assessments of the field organized by interfacing disciplines. Fudge (2017) does the same for the field of history, and Dhont, Hodson, Loughnan, and Amiot (2019) for social psychology. Echeverri, Karp, Naidoo, Zhao, and Chan (2018) focus on methodological issues at the interface of HAS and conservation biology.…”

Adults and Children Blatantly Dehumanize Outgroups

“…It suggests dehumanization is a by-product of more general-purpose social cognitive processes. Through a lifetime of social learning and norm enforcement, individuals learn to use non-human entities, especially animals, as metaphors to emphasize negative traits of other groups (Dhont, Hodson, Loughnan, & Amiot, 2019;Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008). While animal analogies are widely used to degrade outgroups, the belief that humans are morally superior expresses itself late in development and is thought to be largely socially acquired (Wilks, Caviola, Kahane, & Bloom, 2020).…”