Does Your Pet Love You Back?

Experiments from child psychology test dogs’ and cats’ attachment to their owners

Photos by Mary Swift (left) and Tatiana (right), Adobe Stock

We twenty-first century humans love our furry pets. American households with a pet now outnumber those with a child under 18, and most people consider their dogs and cats family members. [1-3] When asked how their pets view them in return, however, pet owners are less certain. We know we’re attached to our pets, but is it mutual?

Rules of Attachment

When psychologists talk about attachment, they don’t just mean a warm and fuzzy feeling. Rather, they define attachment as a bond to someone who provides safety and security. Think of the role a parent plays for a one year-old child: the kid likes to hang out near the parent, is upset when the parent leaves, and feels confident enough to explore, knowing the parent has the kid’s back. [4,5]

Of course, we can’t just come out and ask pets whether their owners provide this kind of emotional security. Instead, animal researchers have adopted a test first devised by child psychologist Mary Ainsworth and known by the slightly creepy name of the Ainsworth Strange Situation Test. In the original experiment, a child explored an unfamiliar toy-filled room in the presence of either a parent, a stranger, or by himself, as well as through various combinations of departures and returns by the parent and stranger. A child would show secure attachment by exploring more in the parent’s presence, engaging with the stranger more when the parent was around, and showing visible emotion when the parent left and came back. [6]

The Ainsworth Strange Situation Test: Pet Edition

When researchers tried to adapt the Ainsworth Test to pets, they realized something: dogs and cats without special training have an even shorter attention span than toddlers. In the classic experiment, the child always explored the room with the parent first, and the stranger only entered the picture later on, but this didn’t fly with pets. By the time the second person arrived on the scene, some pets had lost all interest in the room, rendering the results invalid.

To keep the pets paying attention throughout the experiment, scientists had to switch…