How did you get interested in studying the topic of your paper in Current Directions in Psychological Science: The link between companion dogs, human fertility rates, and social networks?
I’ve been studying dog behavior and cognition for more than 30 years in Budapest, in the Family Dog Project research group at the ELTE Eötvös Loránd University. Approximately ten years ago, during a survey, I asked dog owners on social media, interested in canine research, how much they agreed with the statement: "My dog is more important to me than anyone else." To my great surprise, 66% of respondents, including parents, at least partly agreed. At the time, I was studying ageing in dogs, and I had many experiences where I could directly observe just how emotionally important dogs are to people—often more important than anyone else in their lives. I wanted to understand why that is.
What are the study’s main findings?
I’d describe it more as a theory paper. The “companion dog cultural runaway theory” suggests that our caregiving instincts found a new outlet in companion animals, particularly dogs. This shift has been accelerated and amplified by culture: media, consumer trends, and social norms. Over time, dogs are no longer seen just as pets, but as family members, even surrogate children. Thus, the new paper makes a case that the declining fertility rates contribute to the increasing value of dogs in the lives of people, as they could, at least partly, fill our social need and loss of community, and this escalates rapidly and independently due to cultural changes. The "runaway" effect means that what started as a small shift in pet keeping due to a biologically rooted instinct to care, e.g., bringing dogs indoors, has grown into a widespread, deeply emotional, and socially accepted phenomenon, where dogs play central roles in people’s lives due to culture.
Could you explain it in more details?
I argue that the parent-child-like bond between a dog and their owner is driven by both biological and cultural evolution. This paper attempts to connect these layers into a coherent explanation: our biological need to care and nurture, and the cultural adaptation to modern demographic changes, specifically the decline of extended families and the rise in social isolation. All human behavior is shaped by a combination of genetic inheritance and learning. Learning is strongly influenced by culture, whether through social interactions, reading, or the media. Biologically, humans have evolved over millions of years a strong caregiving instinct through cooperative breeding, meaning that in early human societies, everyone helped raise children. Men and women across all age groups responded to kids' needs, protected them, answered their questions, and supported them emotionally and physically, and not just their own. Everyone participated in the care of children at some level.
This shared caregiving system was a foundational part of our ancestral way of life. But as societies changed through the agricultural and industrial revolutions, the ways of life also shifted, extended family networks practically disappeared, and these communal child-rearing practices largely disappeared. In modern societies, especially urbanized ones, adults often live and work in environments where children are almost completely absent. In fact, our representative Hungarian survey showed that nearly 90% of adults do not spend even one hour a week caring for a child under six. Yet the biological drive to care for vulnerable beings has not gone away because biological evolution is slow.
Cultural evolution, however, is fast. It adapts quickly to changing circumstances, and today it offers dogs as a substitute for the lost social and caregiving bonds. Many people now fulfill their unmet caregiving impulses by caring for pets, especially dogs, who display many infant-like traits and offer a kind of unconditional affection that modern humans often lack in their fragmented social environments.
Thus, one of the paper’s central claims is that the emotional role dogs play in people’s lives today—often as children, close family members, or primary companions—can be explained by the combined forces of biological and cultural evolution. In the absence of strong, supportive communities, many individuals experience emotional wounds or trauma. Dogs are able to offer a sense of safety, companionship, and love without judgment—functions that our biological evolution would have expected us to receive from our human community. In this way, dogs have become not just companions, but emotional lifelines in a rapidly changing world.
Why is this study important for psychology?
Thinking about these links reveals how deeply our emotional and caregiving needs are rooted in both biology and social context. As birth rates decline and traditional social structures weaken, many people live without close family ties or regular interaction with children. Yet the psychological need to nurture and connect hasn’t disappeared. Dogs are increasingly filling this emotional and relational void, not only as pets, but as surrogate children or primary companions.
Understanding this shift helps psychology address broader questions about mental health, loneliness, and changing patterns of human attachment. It also offers insight into how societal transformations, like aging populations, urbanization, and declining fertility, are reshaping our emotional lives. If we want to support human well-being in this new context, we need to recognize how cultural evolution repurposes ancient, genetically driven instincts in modern ways.
What should readers take away from this paper?
Modern companion dog keeping reflects deeper biological and cultural processes that are shaping modern human social life. As traditional support networks shrink and fewer adults have regular contact with young children, the caregiving instinct doesn’t disappear; it shifts. Dogs often step into this emotional and social space, becoming surrogate recipients of affection, care, and attachment. Recognizing this helps us better understand changing family dynamics, mental health trends, and even shifts in fertility behavior. It also highlights the need to integrate evolutionary, psychological, and cultural perspectives when studying human relationships, not only with other people, but also with animals.
More specifically, from a social psychology and sociology perspective, the theory draws attention to how companion animals are increasingly viewed not just as pets, but as full family members. Their growing presence in both public and private life is reshaping societal definitions of family, intimacy, and even identity. The humanization of certain animals, often seen as pure and loyal, may reflect shifting social representations of humanity itself, sometimes in contrast to the perceived flaws of human relationships. In this way, the cultural and biological evolution of dog-human bonds can offer insight into how we define human versus non-human roles in modern life.
From a clinical psychology perspective, the theory underscores how emotionally significant companion animals can be, particularly for people who are isolated or traumatized. Exploring the patient’s relationship with their dog can provide a window into their attachment style, emotional regulation, and capacity for social connection. In some cases, the dog may even serve as a bridge in therapy, helping the person rebuild trust, develop empathy, or reconnect with the broader human community. Understanding the dog’s psychological role can enrich therapeutic work, especially in cases of loneliness, grief, or attachment disorders.
What else could you add?
While this paper focuses on dogs, it's important to emphasize that cats and other pets can also fulfill similar emotional and social roles for many people. They, too, offer companionship, emotional support, and a sense of purpose, especially in households where human caregiving roles are missing. The broader point is that in a world where traditional community structures and intergenerational caregiving have weakened, companion animals increasingly help meet core human needs for connection, nurturing, and emotional stability.
Recognizing this shift urges us to think more deeply about how cultural and biological evolution interact and how our emotional lives adapt in response to societal changes. Companion animals are not just pets; they are active participants in the evolving human social networks.
Prof. Eniko Kubinyi
Department of Ethology ELTE Eötvös Loránd University
