Attitudes Toward Animals: Origins And Diversity
This study is a review of the literature, as of 1988, that investigates human attitudes toward other animals. The researchers conclude that much of the variation in attitudes toward animals can be attributed to factors including cultural attitudes, personal experiences with animals, and/ or is biological as it was useful evolutionarily speaking.
Article Abstract:
“It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of animals in the social and psychological life of our species. Images of animals are everywhere: in our language, religions, dreams, television programs, and folklore. The feelings that we exhibit toward our fellow creatures are intense, complex, and paradoxical. Responses to animals range from the disgust we feel when confronted with a bloated tick to the reverence for animals as deities in so-called primitive cultures; from the love of a child for a pet bunny to the paralyzing fear of phobic experiences when confronted by a harmless spider.”
“In recent years there has been increasing interest in human-animal relationships by investigators from a variety of disciplines. We will not attempt a synthesis of the growing literature on attitudes toward animals, but will follow a different course. For the past decade we have been exploring the diversity and origins of human-animal relationships, and our research has taken us into some rather odd places: cockfights in the United States and Latin America, slaughterhouses, and most recently, the world of supermarket check-out-counter magazines. In this article, we will summarize some of our findings and speculations that bear on the subject of attitudes toward animals. We will also briefly examine alternative methods of gathering information that do justice to the richness of human experience with animals.”