1st Edition
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.
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
Biography
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.
'Why do we dote on some species and revile others? What is the link between animal abuse and violence toward humans? When is animal harm justified in the name of science? In The Social Psychology of the Human-Animal Bond, Laurent Bègue-Shankland dives deeply into our morally complex connections with other species. Combining the latest research in fields from anthropology to moral psychology with his own ground-breaking studies on obedience, he offers a compelling examination of the hidden forces shaping our relationships with animals that is both rigorous and haunting.'
- Hal Herzog, author of Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard To Think Straight about Animals.
'Based on cutting-edge research and thought-provoking analysis, this book delves deep into the complex relationship between human and non-human animals. It provides an enlightening psychological exploration of the central place of animals in human history, culture, and daily life, while critically investigating the dark side of the human-animal bond, marked by human dominance and exploitation. This book compellingly addresses uncomfortable but pressing questions about the moral dilemmas we face in our relationships with nonhuman animals. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand both the compassionate and morally troubling dimensions of our relationships with non-human animals—a powerful challenge to our moral blind spots.'
- Dr Kristof Dhont, University of Kent, President and Co-founder of the PHAIR Society, Co-editor of Why We Love and Exploit Animals
'Finally – a comprehensive, accessible, research-based book about the relationship between humans and animals. Humans and animals have lived together on this planet for millions of years. It covers a wide variety of topics (e.g., animals as companions, tools, research subjects, food). The research evidence clearly indicates that how people treat animals is a good predictor of how they treat other people.'
- Br Brad J. Bushman, PhD, The Ohio State University, USA
'This remarkable book is beautifully written.'
- Jacques Van Rillaer, PhD, University of Louvain, Belgium
