How do I love thee? The five love attitudes people hold toward their pets

Abstract

Relationship processes in the human-pet relationship parallel those in the human romantic relationship. In this study, we sought to determine whether the six human romantic love styles – Eros (ideal), Storge (friendship), Ludus (game-playing), Pragma (practical), Mania (obsessive, dependent) and Agape (selfless), represented the human-pet relationship. We wrote 44 pet-human love style items, derived from the Love Attitudes Scale (Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986 ). Participants ( N = 254) completed these 44 pet love style items, along with measures of romantic love styles, general pet attitudes, and pet and romantic relationship satisfaction. We reduced the 44 items to the following five factors: Eros/Storge, Ludus, Pragma, Mania, and Agape. The pet love attitudes were modestly correlated with human romantic love attitudes suggesting people endorse different love attitudes in different relationships. Multiple regression results showed that Eros/Storge and Agape were positively correlated with pet relationship satisfaction, while Mania was negatively correlated. Eros/Storge was the strongest predictor of relationship satisfaction ( β = 0.68). This is the first study to show that love attitudes apply to human-pet relationships and that certain love attitudes predict a happy relationship with one’s pet.