People tend to name and dress their pets because they feel more in control and connected, claims a psychologist.

Psychology researcher, Adam Waytz of Harvard University, said that people ascribe human features to pets so that the act helps them feel connected with the environment.

As part of his study, Waytz and his team asked one group of people to write essays describing everyday objects as if they were humanoid. Meanwhile, another group were requested to describe the objects as objects.

Later, those who wrote the anthropomorphic essays seemed to better understand the objects than those who wrote straightforward pieces.

When people are deprived of connections with other humans, they'll form connections with non-humans through anthropomorphism. Naming and dressing pets in the human way develops a strong bonding. Men start treating their pets in a more human way.