The Influence of Cognitive Vulnerabilities and Attributions of Animal Sentience on Willingness to Own Pets
Journal Publication ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
The biophilia hypothesis proposes that humans have an innate emotional connection with other living organisms. Willingness to own (WTO) animals as pets could thus be explained by anthropomorphic attributions to animals (AA) (i.e., attribution of human-like characteristics, such as affect, cognition, and sentience, to nonhuman animals), which is a form of biophilic tendency. However, we must also consider biophobic responses, such as perceptions of cognitive vulnerability (CV) (uncontrollability, unpredictability, danger, and disgust), which can predict fear toward animals and explain the uneven distribution of fear across populations. Hence, biophobia may explain differences in the WTO by virtue of fear. Through an online survey of 220 respondents, we investigated the efficacy of both CV and AA in predicting WTO across high-fear (HF, snake and spider) and low-fear (LF, cat and rabbit) animals. We also tested the mediating role of fear in the relationship between CV and WTO and the moderating role of fear in the relationship between AA and WTO. The results of this study yielded some meaningful understandings of WTO LF versus HF animals, highlighting the complexity of pet ownership motivations. Against expectations, mediation analyses indicated that fear plays no significant role in explaining the relationship between participants’ perception of cats and rabbits as uncontrollable, unpredictable, dangerous, or disgusting and their willingness to own them. In contrast, for snakes and spiders, the relationships between perception of uncontrollability and WTO as well as perception of disgustingness and WTO were fully mediated by fear. Results further reveal that fear did not moderate the relationship between AA and WTO for either LF or HF animals. While fear can deter willingness to own some animals as pets, affect toward the animal can play a significant role in overriding those fears.
Journal
Anthrozoos
Publication Name
Anthrozoos
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ISBN/ISSN
1753-0377
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Pages Count
21
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
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DOI
10.1080/08927936.2025.2557659