xxvii approach and interaction for children and adults, both with Mader, Hart, Bergin,
1989
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and without disabilities Hunt, Hunt, Gomulkiewicz, 1992.
23
Together, these research directions suggest that human interactions with animals, particularly
pets, affect human well being and functioning.
3. Positive Qualities
It is hardly surprising that people with meritorious qualities should be like more than those with disagreeable qualities. For example, we like intelligent, warm,
sincere, and competent people more than people who do not have those attributes. Sometimes we prefer people who display positive qualities that are a bit tarnished by
negative ones over people who seem to be without flaw. Therefore, the basic fact remains, we tend to prefer competent people to incompetent ones.
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4. Physical Attractiveness and Liking
In an egalitarian and democratic society, most people would agree that people ought to be judged for what they are and what they do, rather than what they look
like. The physical appearance of an individual can be an important aspect of how that person is viewed by others-however unwarranted such a bias maybe. Judgments
based on physical attractiveness extend to other areas as well; we expect physically attractive people to be more interesting, poised, sociable, kind, strong, outgoing, and
22
www.ingentaconnect.comcontentexternal-references?article=0009- 3920282960L.1529[aid=19584]
23
Hunt, S. J., Hart, L.A., Gomulkiewicz, R. The role of small animals in social linteraction between strangers. Journal of Social Psychology,
133, p.245-256.
24
Feldman, Robert S, Social Psychology: Theories, Research and Applications.USA: McGraw-Hill Company, 1985, p. 212
xxviii sexually warm and responsive that less physically attractive people Dion, Berscheid
and Walster, 1972
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Since pet animals and other animals are pervasive in the environments of human beings, these principles logically lead psychologists to examine human and
animal relationships as an interdependent system. A conceptualist addressing behaviorists like Skinner might ask how pet animals and their human owners
mutually reinforce each other and how, therefore, animals and humans modify one another’s behavior. The dynamic systems theorist would view people-with-animals as
a single system, “acting on one another in dynamic interaction”
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. With each finding of higher human-like cognitive, linguistic, and emotion functioning in nonhuman
animals, conceptualists might ask what implications these capacities have for human relationships with animals? Ecological psychologists like Bronfenbrenner 1979
might challenge a nascent Animal Studies psychology to document how animals and humans respond to, and modify, each other within their significant environments or
ecological niches.
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5. Physical Appearance and Social Behavior
