Human Animal Interaction and Interaction Involvement

Abstract

With increasing use of animals for therapeutic intervention, learning assistance, and health promotion, it becomes increasingly important to understand potential outcomes. Although animals are currently used as tools to increase, improve, and teach communicative skills, little to no documentation of the outcome of human animal interaction (HAI) on people‘s communication exists within the communication literature. This study lays groundwork for such documentation by exploring the link between humans‘ interaction with animals and their interaction involvement in human relationships, measuring attentiveness, perceptiveness, and responsiveness. The findings show that the degree of animal interaction (DAIS) is a significant predictor of human interaction involvement (IIS), and the components of attentiveness and perceptiveness. In addition, having utilized a measure presented by Poresky, Hendrix, Mosier, and Samuelson (1987), the researcher modified their contributions to present a more statistically reliable measure in which to measure human animal interaction.