Ep71 Hal Herzog on biological psychology and cultural influences on human-animal interactions

<p><span style="color: #080708;">Hal Herzog is a professor of psychology at Western Carolina University, whose research entails the complex psychology of human-animal interactions for over three decades. These studies have been published in many journals, including Science, Animal Behavior and The American Psychologist to name a few. He also is the author of ‘Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat’ and writes the blog Animals and Us on Psychology Today.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #080708;">Hal shares with us his love of animals from childhood, specifically reptiles. He quotes collecting reptiles during high school such as the boa constrictor, rat snakes, turtles etc. Hal then goes on to reference how his interest in human-animal interactions formed through his neighbours. They invited Hal to view a cockfighting match, which Hal initially refused. Eventually, Hal agreed due to his rising interest in how viewers perceive the roosters. This interest changed his PhD from snake personality differences to analysing the psychology of humans involved in cockfighting. Following the completion of his PhD, Hal flew to Vancouver, Canada to attend an international theology conference. Whilst at the airport Hal read ‘Animal Liberation’ by Peter Singer. Hal describes initially dismissing Peter’s perception of animal rights but continued to read due to Peter’s arguments being good. Originally, Hal perceived that Peter did not incorporate psychology, believing that logical arguments would not affect humans' treatment of animals. Now, Hal admits the whole book was effective at pulling the heartstrings. Hal then discussed his initial PhD study, working at Gordon Burghardt’s laboratory at the University of Tennessee. The aim was to develop a personality test for baby snakes. This test involved waving his hand in front of the snake to count how many times the snake struck within two minutes. The study demonstrated that siblings from the same litter behaved similarly, with recently fed snakes acting more aggressively