Pet Attachment and the Social Support that Pets Provide to College Students

The purpose of this research was to see how the quality of a person’s attachment to their pet affects their perception of the amount of social support they are receiving from that pet. We recruited a sample of 309 undergraduate students who were pet owners. Students were enrolled in a General Psychology course at Kennesaw State University during Spring 2017. Data were collected using SurveyMonkey®. To measure the quality of pet attachment, we used the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale. To measure perceived social support, we adapted the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. There was a significant relationship between quality of attachment to one’s pet and perceived social support [r(307) = 0.77, p < 0.001, r = 0.59]. We also collected demographic data on variables such as ethnicity, gender, year in college, species of pet owned, number of years of pet ownership, and pet gender. We studied how these different variables affected the quality of pet attachment and perceived social support.