People and their pets: A relational perspective on interpersonal complementarity and attachment in companion animal owners

The current study evaluated the interpersonal circumplex as a theoretical model of companion animal personality and companion animal attachment. To this end, the study surveyed 266 companion animal guardians (owners)-89 reporting their most recent pet a cat and 177 reporting their most recent pet a dog-to assess the relationships between interpersonal complementarity and companion animal attachment. The study used MANOVA to evaluate differences in interpersonal traits for cats, dogs, and people who self-identified that cats or dogs were their ideal pets. Results indicated that cats-and people who identified cats as their ideal pet-were more hostile in their orientation than were dogs or people who preferred dogs. In hierarchical regression-analysis, the study also confirmed the positive relationship between interpersonal complementarity and companion-animal attachment.