Psychological Mechanisms Involved in Human–Animal Interactions

The goal of the current chapter is to cover the psychological mechanisms that operate in human–animal relations and that explain our different reactions to “them” (Amiot and Bastian 2015). While such mechanisms include individual-level factors such as personality (Mathews and Herzog 1997) and attachment—mostly to pets (Zilcha-Mano et al. 2011a, 2011b, 2012)—societal and group-level processes are also fundamental to understanding the dynamics of human–animal interactions (Plous 1993a, 1993b, 2003). This chapter aims to review these psychological processes; it also aims to highlight areas of contestation that are in need of further research.