The Social Psychology of the Human-Animal Bond

Winner of the 2024 Prix Emile Girardeau prize, rewarding exceptional work in the economic or sociological sciences, this book examines afresh our relationships of dominance with and affection for animals. It reviews how animals played a pivotal role in ancient civilizations, and still play a fundamental part in human lives, and looks at how many humans feel deep affection and other strong emotions towards animals. This book offers an understanding of human relationships with animals, providing an analysis of paradoxical human behaviour towards animals and a look at how empathy toward animals can be manipulated. Most notably, this book offers an in-depth look at Bègue-Shankland's adaptation of the famous Stanley Milgram’s experiment on submission to authority (this time, ordinary men and women are led to harm what they believe to be a lab animal (actually a robot) for the sake of science) to shed new light on what influences our behaviour and empathy towards animals. This book shows how much our relations with animals – from attachment to abuse – reveal our identity and our relations with others. It will provide a valuable resource not only to students and researchers studying human-animal relations, zoology, and human psychology, but also to a general reader interested in animal advocacy.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Poison- control Fish at the G20 Meeting Milgram’s Experiment Revisited Humans Facing Animals Kundera’s Moral Test 1 Humans are Animals to an Extent Humans, the Pinnacle of Creation Darwin: One Hell of a Fall With New Perspectives Come New Biases The Test of Consciousness, a Mismeasure of Animals What it’s Like to Be an Animal Evolving Representations 2 The Role of Animals in Human Cultures Ancestral Companionship Mutual Attraction From Oracles to Religions From Representation to Mimicry Animals as Tools and Resources The Beneficial Presence of Animals Partisan Zoology From Aesop to Disney 3 Interwoven Relationships Between Animals and Humans Dehumanising a Group by Animalising it Are People Who Care More about Animals Also More Compassionate with Humans? A Framing Effect Categorising Animals and Depriving Them of Individuality 4 The Origins of Our Prejudices Against Animals Where Animals and Humans Meet Three Types of Animal Threats Conflicts Over Resources Influence Representations The Two Dimensions of our Perception of Animals 5 The Paradoxes of Might Makes Right Cognitive Dissonance How to Solve the Problem of Meat Consumption? 6 The Fluid Boundaries of Empathy Are Fish Outside the Scope of our Empathy? Fish Culture Conditions for Empathy 7 Cruelty Towards Animals and Deviance Is there a Connection between Animal Abuse and Violence against Humans? Serial Killers and a Norman Peasant Violence and the Sociozoological Scale Who by Fire, Who by Water? What We Learn from General Population Studies Cruel Teenagers Psychological Deficiencies and Trauma 8 Why Are Human Societies Cruel to Animals? Reasons for Ordinary Violence The Escalation Hypothesis Of Mice and Norms 9 How Empathy Gets Turned Off Double Sacrifice The Harmful Principle A Risk of Emotional Anaesthesia? Laboratory Strategies and Semantic Tricks Talking Points and Euphemisms “Nameless” 10 Arguing Over Animal Bodies Descartes’s Animal Machine: What Exactly Are We Talking About? The Case of the Brown Dog The Politicised Animal Direct Action Movements Class Oppositions The Political Denunciation of Vivisection The Overrepresentation of Women Presidential Dogs 11 How Many Dogs for Every Human? The Trolley Problem Opinion Polls on Animal Experimentation Mental Attributions and their Uses for Research Mental Frameworks and Animal Instrumentalisation 12 Human Obedience in the Lab: The Milgram Experiment Looking Back at Milgram’s Experiment Milgram, 60 Years After the First Shocks Obedience to Authority is Not What Milgram Thought it Was A Ratchet Effect? Science as a Higher Goal A Model of Rational Obedience 13 An Experimental Study Using a Robotic Fish: A Variation of the Milgram Experiment In Silico: The Scientist and the Artist A Biomimetic Fish Describing the Injection Protocol The Recruitment Process and the Different Steps of the Experiment The Impact of the Protocol Spotting Suspicious Participants 14 What the Study Reveals About Us Behavioural Predictions: A Better- Than- Average Effect Consented Authority How Does a Pro- science Attitude Influence Behaviour? 15 Neutralising the Gaze of Animals Touched by a Gaze Selective Empathy Zero Degrees of Empathy The Empathy Quotient and Behaviour Hierarchising Living Beings Converging Influences 16 Moral Dilemmas Stress and Tension Moral Pain Relief Self- exoneration Altruism or Rebellion? The “Pet as Ambassador” Hypothesis Poignant Personal Experiences Once the Experiment is Over Afterword: A Canary in the Coalmine Our Compromises with Animals After Milgram: Revisiting Our Conceptions of Submission to Authority With a Canary in the Coalmine Acknowledgements

About the Author :
Laurent Bègue-Shankland is a professor of social psychology at the University of Grenoble- Alpes and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is also a visiting researcher at Stanford University and the head of the Maison des sciences de l’homme-Alpes (CNRS/UGA). His award-winnning research has appeared in many publications including Time, The Atlantic, Slate, New York Post, Harvard Business Review, and National Geographic. He was also a recipient of the 2013 Ig Nobel Prize.