UC Santa Barbara

Previous research has shown that pets provide emotional benefits for human beings and thus are an indispensable part of human life. However, there is no research that particularly looks into the social support people receive during human-animal interaction in comparison with human-human interaction from a cultural psychology perspective. Previously, Asian Americans have been shown to use more implicit social support and less explicit social support than European Americans because Asian Americans have higher levels of relational concern (Kim et al., 2006). In the current study, I hypothesized that people mainly receive implicit social support from pets, and therefore, people with higher typical usage of implicit social support, lower typical usage of explicit social support, and higher level of relational concern will have less negative affect, less stress, and more positive affect after thinking of their pets versus their friends. On a group level, I hypothesized that Asian Americans (compared to European Americans) will have less negative affect, less stress, and more positive affect, after thinking of their pet versus their friend. In Study 1, we obtained results that were contradictory to our hypothesis within a sample of European and Asian/Asian American undergraduates. In Studies 2 and 3, we found partial support for our hypotheses among European American pet owners recruited from an online platform (Mturk). Future investigation is necessary to fully uncover the social support people receive from pets in comparison with human partners across cultural orientations.