The Social Psychology of the Human-Animal Bond

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