Romantic Partners and Four-Legged Friends - an Extension of Attachment Theory to Relationships With Pets - Assignment Example

Romantic Partners and Four-Legged Friends - an Extension of Attachment Theory to Relationships With Pets Problem Statement In Asia, people do not want a child. Therefore, the Asian people have resorted to keeping pets as their children, and therefore they buy products for these pets. However, some of the products are ridiculous even though the Asian communities are crazy about having such products. They are also willing to buy it. However, many people think that this is against the biological natural. The problem statement above leads to a design research study to justify the stand of the Asian societies about their affection to pets. The pet product under this analysis is the wedding dress. This is a product that pet owners purchase to give to the pets to be worn during weddings. SWOT Analysis Method Even though it faces criticism when embracing this practice, there are the advantages associated with it. For instance, if the dog is the best-behaved pet in the compound, including it as part of the guests at the wedding will be a way of rewarding it. It shows a great sense of attachment between human beings and companion animals. Moreover, the pet will contribute to the beautiful photographs which will be taken during the event to mark it. Research has shown that spending time with this animal pet helps to relieve the owner of the state of stress. On the other hand, the pet dog may misbehave on the wedding. It will, therefore, prompt the pet owner to be controlling it every time as it moves from one point to another. This is because the dog gets overstimulated at the event, the fact which is attributed to the state of anxiety in this animal. In this paper, my interest is research on the causes of the secure attachment of Asian people to animal pets, to the extent that they regard them more than their children. The criticism posed towards this issue is that being obsessed with pets at the expense of the children is a biological norm. Therefore, the review of the literature on the parent-child attachment theories will be pertinent concerning this issue. The development of avoidant attachment styles by parents on their children is based on the parents’ response to their emotional and physical demands. When children develop anxious and ambivalent patterns of behavior have them lose confidence in their parents’ capacity to meet those needs. The bond between human beings and animals has faced much attention by scholars in the recent past. From the studies conducted in many Asian countries, the companion animals, also called pets, are a boon to those people who own them, thereby offering them many benefits in numerous ways. For instance, the corporeal and emotional health of the pet possessors is boosted by the companionship of these pets. Secondary analysis of the survey data conducted by a Japanese social survey campaign reveals that the practice of keeping the pets and spending much money to nurture them contributes to the betterment of the adults regarding the social status and the health portfolio. However, the relationship between the health of those people aged 60 years and is not linked with the practice of pet ownership. The research aims to evaluate the activity of pet keeping a context among the Asian groups, such as those living in Japan, in order to have an insight into the common trend that is imminent today about their spending habits. According to the euro motive international report concerning food and care of pets in Japan, several individuals outlook animals as a portion of the members of their families. It has led to the situation where those adults spend little or no money to keep their children comfortable, as opposed to what they spend in their pets, such as dogs. The attachment to pets is higher among the childless people. There is a belief that pet ownership has many benefits to the owners. For instance, the individual ownership of pets is assumed to be related to pet ownership and the view of these animals as companions. Background and Significance Many of the scholarly studies have been projected towards the bodily health paybacks of the connection with the pets in many locations in the US. In many animal-assisted therapy cases, the interaction between the trained pets and patients takes place every day. In this situation, the pets can help to rehabilitate the patients physically. For instance, a patient can regain a state of balance after riding on a horse, being a pet in this respect. In addition to that, companion animals can perform a significant role in encouraging affirmative feelings and behaviors among the owners. For instance, owning a pet remained unrelated to emotive or bodily well-being among the old, according to Garrity et al. (1989). However, the attachment of humans to pets helped to bring about relief from depression. It is important to note that when a person takes care of an animal, for which he or she is weakly attached to, leads to an increase in the levels of stress. Therefore, taking responsibility for the pets can be linked to strong attachments that exist among these creatures. The role of pets has been discovered by many scholars such as al Fayez et al., (2003). Moreover, the study of the relationship between the pet owners and the pets has been considered in diverse contexts to unmask the truth behind this phenomenon. For instance, the attitudes of human beings toward companion animals are determined by numerous factors. Some of these factors include culture, economic, social, and psychological variants. It also implies that this interaction varies from one country to another (Al-Fayez et al., 2003). Exploring the Bond: The Attachment Theory There has been a broad scope of study on the attachment of people towards pets. Even though this is not detailed openly, many most of those theories are based on the anthropological affection philosophy. It was developed by John and then Bartholomew and Horowitz expanded it for more natural synthesis. Bartholomew presented a prototype which helped to point out the typical styles of human attachment to pets, especially, the attachment of adults. The structure of the relationships exhibited by human beings towards animals is similar to that of human to human interactions. For instance, a father can buy his son a pair of shoes to wear so that the child will experience comfort while walking. On the same note, purchasing items that facilitate comfort in a pet is inevitable through this theory of human attachment. However, there are limitations among various species, but this does imply that they are less significant compared to the other human beings. Human considers the support that the pets can offer as opposed to what the children can do. For instance, animals are steadfast and more predictable than human beings about offering their support. The system of relations account reveals that in some aspects of social support and proper nurturance, the pets would offer more support than that which the members of the family will provide. This was put forward by Bonas and McNicholas in the year 2003. Conversely, this does not mean that all the interactions with pets are beneficial. Therefore, the attachment may partially illustrate the nature of the connection between the pet owners and subjective well-being. Man-petRelations-Demographic Aspects and the Nation of Origin The features of a particular species of animal affect the bond that is prevalent with human beings. The human characteristics also influence that nature of this relationship. For instance, cultural diversities affect the attachment of a pet possessor towards his or her tame. It helps to dictate the nature of treatment to which the person will subject the pet. The cultural differences usually, impact the attitudes of pet owners to these human companions. Most of the research has emphasized the Caucasians’ attitudes towards the pets (Johnson and Meadows, 2002). Also, the disparities in the social class have been studied in the context of its effect on human-animal interactions. That is why most of the researchers have recruited participants from veterinary clinics to facilitate their findings. The owners of pets that are of a low socioeconomic class who have low attachment to pets are expected to seek for therapeutic attention for their animals. This is not pertinent to pets solely. There is an assertion that there is a significant difference in the gender and class projected to these animals. In the research about the women of Los Angeles, it identified that these females had a utilitarian view of their pets as opposed to the white women who of a different opinion. The Affection to Companion Creatures The motivation for pet possession is essential to comprehend the affection of human beings to pets. The most obvious explanations about the issue of pet affection is stated by Arther (1997) and also he makes a proposition for this. Firstly, the issue of secure attachment to pets shows that there is a poor capability for human beings to maintain a good relation with other human beings. For instance, a father who does not buy his son shoes but prefers to purchase his pet a wedding dress as illustrated in the problem statement for this research design. It is as a result of the modern living styles of human beings, whereby the pet owners expect the benefits of such pets about their health conditions. Additional, they have a hope of an improved status of their well-being. He further suggests that the explanations are not accurate since the attachment is purported to come from their capacity to manipulate the responses of human beings. The Pet Population in Asia The population of pets is Asia can be sampled by considering the situation in Japan. The pet population in Japan is experiencing a rising trend while the fertility rate is declining. The fertility rate in this country is currently 1.3 as opposed to the replacement level of 2.1. The cat and dog ownership is increasing steadily, at the rate of 3 percent per year. The dogs and cats have been regarded as the favorite animals since the 1960s. Demerits of Pets Keeping In Asia There are widespread inbreeding and many canine genetic conditions associated with these pets. There has also been a trend of childless couples in Japan whereby the canines show unique appearances. Research Design and Methods A mixed design approach will be used to carry out this study, in which the correlational and quasi-experimental aspects are entailed. The quasi-experimental approach will entail comparison of the empathy, pet attitude and also attachment scores for pets. On the other hand, the correlational aspect will involve research on the relationship between empathy and pet attitude. The data for the present study will be obtained from the Japanese general social survey. It was collected in the year 2000. The secondary will apply in this study also. This survey is located in the United States of America, and it serves to find the information of a specific population. It, therefore, solicits information of the people of Asia, covering many aspects of their culture. The respondents in this study are aged 20 years and over. This is because age is a determinant of legal adulthood in this region. However, race and ethnicity will not be considered because the target populations exhibit a similar characteristic. The survey will be carried out across Japan, whereby 4500 men and women of age 20 to 80 will be interviewed. These will be from 300 locations in Japan so that the findings will be a clear representation of the population phenomenon. Measures The outcome variable for subjective well-being will be constituted of many items that show satisfaction in various aspects of life. I will create a variable called “satisfaction with life.” From this element, I will take the mean of the answers, bearing in mind the diverse aspects of their life. Satisfaction with life is coded in a reverse way, whereby high scores imply greater satisfaction. Individually, their place of residence will be taken into account, and also their current financial situations are also considered. Independent variables for the research The following independent variable will be applied. First, pet possession and the extent of affection to the animals are the significant elements that are independent. A dummy variable can be used to represent the pet ownership. For instance, “1” represents the pet owner, “0” implies a non-pet owner. A scale constituting eight items will measure attachment to pets. According to Cronbach’s alpha scale, the value of 0.92 is used. Measures of attachment Many attachment inventories will be evaluated, and this will be based on their application to the current research. Use of questionnaires will measure adult attachment to pets, and also interviews will be carried out to understand the adult attachments to their pets. The following measures will be devised to accomplish this research: Adult attachment questionnaire, experiences in close relationship scale, and the adult attachment scale. Finally, the relationship questionnaire will be utilized. Anxiety and depression measurement There are numerous approaches which can be used to quantify the depression of people, anxiety and also their depression. The inventory of Beck about depression will be used. Another measure that will be applied to measure depression is the Hamilton rating scale for depression (Hamilton, 1967). It has an internal consistency of between .71-.73. Data Analysis Methods In order to analyze the data for this study, SPSS will be the right tool to use. In this software, the t-tests should be used to compare the data that will be collected for both the pet owners and the non-owners. Additionally, nested linear regression models will be crucial in this research, so that the impacts of the independent variables on the aspects of pet owners will be evaluated. For instance, an alpha level of 0.05 will be suitable for all the statistical tests that will be carried out. The data will be presented on frequency distribution graphs and histograms. Weaknesses/Limitations of This Study The study only analyses the data that was obtained at a particular instant of time. Therefore, it is impossible to establish the direction that led to most of the relationships among the Asian people and the pets. It can be possible to tell that those people who are happy and health have a greater capability to take care of their pets. In addition to that, this class of people can avail themselves emotionally to take care of their pets in order to improve the bonds with the pets. Similarly, even if all the assumptions are supported, acquiring a pet may be preceded by a greater sense of health. Suggestions for Future Research It will be essential for the researcher to emphasize on the issue of pet attachment about well-being as opposed to pet ownership per se. This is because the current analysis focuses on the subjective well-being of the pet owners about the evident attachment in this perspective. Additionally, people who are accountable for taking care of these animals will be affected more by the ownership of such a pet than those who claim that they are living with the pets in the same home. When designing the items for this survey, it will be essential to consider asking the question about the primary responsibility of the pet owners for their pets. It will be a significant follow up to the question of pet ownership. Moreover, it is essential to focus on other types of products for pets in the future research design. Above all, there is a need to consider other animals apart from the dog in the future research design. It will help to reveal the broader perspective of human-animal attachment, which is taking root in the Asian community. Another element that needs to be incorporated in future research on this issue of human-pet attachment is that the study ought to be focused on the consequence of this issue on the wellbeing of the pet possessors. References Archer, J. 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