Why We Love and Exploit Animals

This unique book brings together research and theorizing on human-animal relations, animal advocacy, and the factors underlying exploitative attitudes and behaviors towards animals.

Why do we both love and exploit animals? Assembling some of the world’s leading academics and with insights and experiences gleaned from those on the front lines of animal advocacy, this pioneering collection breaks new ground, synthesizing scientific perspectives and empirical findings. The authors show the complexities and paradoxes in human-animal relations and reveal the factors shaping compassionate versus exploitative attitudes and behaviors towards animals. Exploring topical issues such as meat consumption, intensive farming, speciesism, and effective animal advocacy, this book demonstrates how we both value and devalue animals, how we can address animal suffering, and how our thinking about animals is connected to our thinking about human intergroup relations and the dehumanization of human groups.

This is essential reading for students, scholars, and professionals in the social and behavioral sciences interested in human-animal relations, and will also strongly appeal to members of animal rights organizations, animal rights advocates, policy makers, and charity workers.

Kristof Dhont, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Kent, UK, and Director of SHARKLab, studying human intergroup and human-animal relations. He investigates the psychological factors underpinning speciesism, racism, and sexism and serves as Associate Editor (Group Processes & Intergroup Relations) and Consulting Editor (European Journal of Personality).

Gordon Hodson, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology at Brock University, Canada. His research interests include prejudice, dehumanization and speciesism, ideology, and intergroup contact. He is an Editor-in-Chief (European Review of Social Psychology) and Associate Editor (Group Processes & Intergroup Relations). He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.