![\"feeling](\"http:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/03\/feeling-emotions.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nA seemingly straightforward question, and one that I recently asked on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what you answered, Facebookers:<\/p>\n The overwhelming majority exclaimed \u201cYES!\u201d, with a few undecided and even fewer saying no.<\/p>\n 3, to be exact.<\/p>\n Interestingly, if this question had been asked, say, 20 years ago, I think the answer may have been very different.<\/p>\n Facebook wasn\u2019t around then, though.<\/p>\n But when Jaak Panksepp (one of the pioneer researchers studying emotions), reported that rats laugh when you tickle them<\/em>, back in the late 1990s, he was questioned and ridiculed by the scientific community.<\/p>\n \u201cMoahahahaha! That\u2019s preposterous!\u201d<\/em> they said.<\/p>\n Not so anymore.<\/p>\n Now there are congresses on the topic of Affective Neuroscience, the zone where neurons, emotions and cognition meet. The scientific community is mostly aboard – though some of Panksepp’s conclusions are still debated.<\/p>\n In the Facebook crowds I polled, whether-animals-have-emotions<\/em> was not a particularly controversial topic, and many even suggested that the issue is resolved once and for all.<\/p>\n However, I\u2019m not sure how representative the responses I got were, considering that I hang out in animal training groups.<\/p>\n What the average pet owner, or people without pets, or people from other cultures, would answer \u2013 I don\u2019t know. But I suspect that I\u2019d get more mixed answers from another crowd.<\/p>\n So, I sent Jaak Panksepp an email, asking him. He graciously answered within a few hours, saying that controversy is diminishing except in “people who have much to lose”<\/em>, such as in the field of human cognitive neurosciences.<\/p>\n Imagine a zebra spotting a charging lion, and dashing away.<\/p>\n Animals run from danger. So do people, and we call the emotion associated with scampering off to safety \u2018fear\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n The controversy is not whether animals show responses analogous to ours when exposed to danger (they do), or have physiological reactions similar to humans (they do).<\/p>\n The question is, do zebras have the same inner experience<\/em>, the subjective feeling <\/em>of the emotion, which goes with running-for-your-life-from-a-pursuing-lion?<\/p>\n Or are they simply going through the motions, like machines? The high blood pressure, the cortisol release and the glucose increase serving the beast to run faster, without the accompanying feeling of terror and dread?<\/em><\/p>\n Some argue that animals have these subjective feelings, others that they don\u2019t, and yet others, that there is no way we can test it to find out.<\/p>\n Not that you\u2019d guess that this was a big issue from looking at my small data set\u2026 and I won\u2019t go into the details of their arguments in this post.<\/p>\n Does it matter whether animals have emotions?<\/p>\n I think it does.<\/p>\n I think it matters whether we regard the fleeing zebra as fearful<\/em>, as opposed to \u201crunning-when-exposed-to-lions\u201d. <\/em><\/p>\n I think that distinction will help us take better care of them, we\u2019ll all be a bit happier \u2013 and the world will be a better place.<\/p>\n Full disclosure: I happen to subscribe to the \u201cof course animals can feel<\/em> the emotion\u201d-crowd. To me, it makes perfect sense that they should, considering that we share the same evolutionary past.<\/p>\n Emotions are closely linked to behaviours with tremendously important survival value, and such mechanisms tend to be stable over evolutionary time.<\/p>\n I have feelings, I\u2019m assuming my relatives do too.<\/p>\n Including at least my fellow humans, mammals and birds.<\/p>\n That\u2019s how I rationalize my conviction. Also, I happen just think that they do, for no reason other than that I get that impression after hanging out with animals.<\/p>\n The \u201cbecause.I-think-so\u201d is not scientific, though, and the skeptics would tear that argument apart in no time.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not all that interested in having that discussion though.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t care particularly if I\u2019m right<\/em> \u2013 I often change my mind when I learn new things.<\/p>\n I\u2019m more interested in another question:<\/p>\n People may be wrong in two ways. In science, we call it the type I and type II error, and I tend to forget which is which. But one error is referred to as the false positive, the other as the false negative.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s play a little hypothetical game.<\/p>\n The what-happens-if-you\u2019re-wrong-game.<\/p>\n Animals either have subjective feelings, or they don\u2019t. And some people believe that they do, and some don\u2019t believe it. Ergo: some people have it all backwards.<\/p>\n Admittedly, I could be among those in the wrong.<\/p>\n Annoying as that would be, it\u2019s a possibility.<\/p>\n In this game, I\u2019m assuming that we would treat animals differently depending on if we think they have emotions, especially when it comes to suffering.<\/p>\n With regards to emotions in animals, what would the two hypothetical misconceptions look like?<\/p>\n To me, the key question is not whether animals experience the feeling of emotions, but which mistake would you rather make?<\/em><\/p>\n This is hypothetical, of course. But a sobering thought: what if you\u2019re wrong?<\/p>\n Personally, I can live with being mistaken about animal emotions.<\/p>\n If it turned out that they don\u2019t have emotions, I can shrug off my misguided notion with a slightly bruised ego.<\/p>\n I would have wasted time, commitment and money trying to make life better for animals and minimize their suffering.<\/p>\n Pearls before pigs, in a manner of speaking.<\/p>\n For me, it would be more difficult to dismiss my past misconception if it included neglecting suffering. If I had treated animals as if they had no capacity to be frightened or happy, and later found out I was wrong, I\u2019d be very distressed.<\/p>\n I would thus encourage skeptics to give animals the benefit of a doubt, <\/em>if for no other reason, to reduce the pain of potentially being mistaken.<\/p>\n Act so that animals in your care don\u2019t suffer, regardless of whether you think they could.<\/p>\n While you\u2019re at it, try to make them happy, too. The absence of suffering does not equal high well-being, after all.<\/p>\n But being able to live with yourself in case you\u2019re wrong is not the only reason to be nice to animals. It certainly isn\u2019t the most important reason. <\/em><\/p>\n People have an emotional need to connect with animals. We cuddle, play and confide in our animal friends. A huge chunk (if not all?) of the human-animal bond is emotional, and we tend to get more attached to mammals and birds than to fish.<\/p>\n I would guess that the significance of an animal in the lives of the people caring for her depends at least in part on how well she attunes to her owner\u2019s emotional needs. And it\u2019s my conviction that part of that attunement is because mammals and birds behave as if they have emotions, too.<\/p>\n Indeed, the human-animal attachment involves the feel-good hormone oxytocin, among others, which has been shown to increase in both humans and dogs during positive interactions.<\/p>\n So, not only do dogs behave as if they have emotions, their hormonal system mirror ours, too.<\/p>\n Health benefits of pet ownership includes reduced worry, depression and pain.<\/p>\n How much of this effect is due to the emotional involvement?<\/p>\n A great deal, it seems.<\/p>\n Does someone who thinks animals have emotions have better relationships with their pet than someone who doesn\u2019t?<\/p>\n Are they more helped by a therapy dog visiting the hospital?<\/p>\n That hasn\u2019t been specifically studied, as far as I can tell \u2013 but it\u2019s not implausible since bonding involves emotional connection.<\/p>\n But feeling-good-by-bonding-with-your pet isn\u2019t the most important reason for being nice to animals. <\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s been known for some time that it is beneficial for kids to have pets at home. However, studies have shown that it\u2019s not the being-close-to-pets that\u2019s relevant, it\u2019s the forming-a-relationship-with-animals that makes children more socially competent and empathic.<\/p>\n We know that improving kids\u2019 kindness and caring towards animals have beneficial effects on children\u2019s prosocial skills.<\/p>\n How does this relate to whether animals have emotions?<\/p>\n Again, relationships involve emotional connections.<\/p>\n Now I\u2019m going to be speculative: I think the quality of the human-animal bond improves if one assumes that animals have subjective feelings, too.<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s more difficult and unlikely to become truly attached to a Tamagotchi or a toy animal than a real puppy.<\/p>\n In other words, I\u2019m arguing that assuming that animals have emotions could improve the human-animal bond, produce more socially competent youngsters, who then grow up to save the world from war, famine and climate change.<\/p>\n Sort of kidding, but I\u2019m on the verge of singing a teary-eyed \u201cwe shall overcome\u201d too.<\/p>\n The most important reason to be nice to animals and behave as if they have emotions is that kids mimic adults. <\/em><\/p>\n If you behave nicely towards animals, your kids will too. <\/em>In doing so, they become more socially competent, and empathic \u2013 toward people.<\/p>\n In short, assuming that animals have emotions makes the world a better place, for people as well as animals. <\/em><\/p>\n A note of caution. \u201cBeing nice to animals\u201d is complicated.<\/p>\n Over-feeding pets is a big problem, as many vets will attest. And although anthropomorphizing is sometimes a great shortcut to understanding and caring for animals, it carries some major caveats too. A topic for another day, perhaps. Actually, I wrote a bit about that in this post<\/a>. If you’re an aspiring animal trainer, you should read it.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Want to learn more? My online courses are wildly popular but only open for admission occasionally. Sign up to be kept in the loop, and I’ll keep you posted on upcoming free webinars, masterclasses, silly experiments and new blog posts, too!<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n References:<\/p>\n Ascione & Weber (1996). Children’s attitudes about the humane treatment of animals and empathy: One-year follow up of a school-based intervention.<\/p>\n Odendaal & Meintjes (2003). Neurophysiological correlates of affiliative behaviour between humans and dogs.<\/p>\n Poresky & Hendrix (1990). Differential effects of pet presence and pet-bonding on young children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s the better way of being wrong – and makes the world a better place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6815,"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions\/6815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What is the issue, then?<\/h5>\n
<\/p>\nWhat would be the cost of being wrong?<\/h5>\n
<\/a>\n
<\/a>Connecting emotionally to animals feels good.<\/h5>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nHow assuming that \u201canimals have emotions\u201d benefits kids \u2013 and society.<\/h5>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n