Abstract
ABSTRACTThere is a growing body of scientific evidence supporting the existence of emotions in nonhuman animals. Companion-animal owners show a strong connection and attachment to their animals and readily assign emotions to them. In this paper we present information on how the attachment level of companion-animal owners correlates with their attribution of emotions to their companion cat or dog and their attribution of mirrored emotions. The results of an online questionnaire, completed by 1,023 Dutch-speaking cat and/or dog owners (mainly in the Netherlands and Belgium), suggest that owners attribute several emotions to their pets. Respondents attributed all posited basic (anger, joy [happiness], fear, surprise, disgust, and sadness) and complex (shame, jealousy, disappointment, and compassion) emotions to their companion animals, with a general trend toward basic emotions (with the exception of sadness) being more commonly attributed than complex emotions. All pet owners showed strong attachment to their companion animal(s), with the degree of attachment (of both cat and dog owners) varying significantly with education level and gender. Owners who ascribed human characteristics to their dog or cat also scored higher on the Pet Bonding Scale (PBS). Finally, owners who found it pleasant to pet their dog or cat had a higher average PBS score than those who did not like to do so. The relationship between owners’ attributions of mirrored emotions and the degree of attachment to dogs was significant for all emotions, whilst for cats this relationship was significant only for joy, sadness, surprise, shame, disappointment, and compassion.
Highlights
❖ Companion-animal owners express strong emotional connections to their animals (Hall et al 2004), often considering them part of the family and providing them with levels of affection, comfort, and support similar to that of another human family member (Wrobel and Dye 2003; Donohue 2005; Zilcha-Mano, Mikulincer and Shaver 2011)
In this study we aimed to extend the knowledge of demographic variables that underpin owner attribution of emotions to companion animals for six basic emotions: anger, joy, fear, surprise, disgust, and sadness, and four complex emotions: shame, jealousy, disappointment, compassion
The aims of our research were to investigate which of 10 posited emotions owners assign to their companion cat or dog, the influence of demographic variables on the assignment of emotions, and if the assignment of emotions correlated with attachment levels
Summary
❖ Companion-animal owners express strong emotional connections to their animals (Hall et al 2004), often considering them part of the family and providing them with levels of affection, comfort, and support similar to that of another human family member (Wrobel and Dye 2003; Donohue 2005; Zilcha-Mano, Mikulincer and Shaver 2011). In human-to-human attachment relationships, participants “attune” to each other’s emotions and behavior (Fogel 1993; Van Geert and Steenbeek 2005). This social referencing is well documented in children, who look to their parents in unfamiliar situations to “mirror” their parent’s appraisal of the situation (Feldman 2003). In the case of inter-species social referencing, dogs have been repeatedly documented to refer to their owners’ appraisal and portrayed emotional messages to seek information about a situation and determine their behavior (Merola, Prato-Previde and Marchall-Pescini 2012; Hare and Woods 2013; Wang et al 2013). Of particular interest are studies correlating human assessment of an animal’s emotional experience with physical and physiological measures of stress in animals (Minero et al 2009; Stockman et al 2012), inferring some verisimilitude in human assessment of animals’ emotional experiences
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