Comments on: Episode 99: Animal Emotions – Does Your Pet Really Have Feelings?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:46:49 +0000

I enjoyed this episode! I agree with the researcher in that this study did not point to their behavior proving that dogs (or at least these 14) feel guilt but I agree with her that it also does not rule out -or even severely damage the case for- the possibility of animals having feelings.

I happen to believe that at the very least animals have some very basic emotions and that with good, consistent training they possibly will experience more complex emotions. I do not have a degree in Psychology and can’t say I’ve actively studied it for long but it seems to me that the process of child development is very much the same…

A newborn cries and that tells us she is either sad, hungry, or in some other kind of discomfort; as this child grows she begins to be trained in social rules and consequences which lends itself to guilt and pride.

Yes, this is a weak argument for the case of Pro-Anthropomorphism because I have to assume that dogs have the ability to develop similarly enough to a human child to process these more complex thoughts and emotions; however, the other argument, with little exception, doesn’t in my mind have a far better argument.

My thought is: is not all emotion based on some sort of pavlovian response to conditioning? I’ll be trolling the Development section to see if I can find anything here at the psychfiles to help me better understand this and see if I’m onto the right idea.

@Nathan – I’m sure I misunderstood, so I’m asking for qualification in the form of an observation: When we are presented ConditionA + ResultB = DataC, we cannot just conclude that DataC is faulty or weak because it conflicts with TheoryA. I’m pretty sure I misunderstood what you meant – maybe I need to go study Darwin’s Analysis of the Brain? – Any help you could provide on your meaning or where I need to go to understand would be appreciated!

Well, looks like I wrote enough to make my own podcast script – sorry and goodnight. (I felt guilt =P)

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:19:40 +0000

Cathy: good point about dopamine. I talk a bit about dopamine in episode 101 on music. I plan to interview the researcher for this study in a future episode, in part because she does a lot more research on animals (particularly dogs), so I’ll follow-up with her on this. I think she would agree with you that animals have emotions (as would I), it’s just that in some cases – like this one – their behavior can be explained in non-emotional ways. More to come.

By: Cathy

Cathy — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:58:05 +0000

I believe they do have emotions. I don’t think when you see a video of a mother cat running in, and out of a burning building to save her kittens is purely instinct. Even if it was instinct that does not exclude emotion.
Scientists know that dopemine is a pleasure chemical in the brain. They believe that this chemical is proof that we experience emotion because it causes the emotion “pleasure”. Could there not be other chemicals related to emotion that could prove or disprove if animals have feelings? Do they know of these chemicals now, or do we not know enough about the brain yet? This seems like the obvious place to look for today’s modern scientific proof.
I also think at least some proof could come from well researched animal behavior studies. Does anyone know where to find these?

By: Nathan

Nathan — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:39:32 +0000

Roman covered much of what I was thinking when I listened to this podcast. “Do dogs feel guilt” is a total strawman hypothesis. A three year old would not feel any guilt over breaking an ancient vase. The 3 year old has no conception of an ancient vase or why it’s destruction would be so unfortunate. Someone who is a non native speaker of English could unwittingly greet a stranger with an insult or swear word. Would she feel guilt at that moment? Of course not! She might only feel guilty after it was explained to her what her word meant. Why not test more fundamental emotions like loyalty, happiness, and sadness? The entire argument that animals do not have thoughts and feelings (even similar to ours) is to reject a Darwinian analysis of the human brain. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that dogs, cats, whales, have similar emotions as humans based on phylogeny? There is a huge body of evidence that animals have degrees of emotion (as we would define emotions–how else could the emotions be defined or related? We’re the ones doing the relating!). Look at the work of Frans De Waal for instance. I find this whole argument outdated.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:35:53 +0000

You’ve got some good points and the author did go out of her way (as much as you can in a published research article) to state that this study doesn’t prove that dogs don’t feel guilt or that other animals don’t have various emotions. It’s just that there is a behavioral component to the whole process (as you say, “partially learned behavior”). I think the author would agree with you.

By: Roman

Roman — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:38:55 +0000

Anthropomorphism, I don’t think those experiments prove anything about it. I do think that the described experiments with dogs are interesting and maybe they even suggest that a dog does not actually feel guilty, but no more than a human. How old were the dogs? Do the same tests with a three year old human child and I’m pretty sure it will not feel guilty either. I think the whole issue of guilt and all the other emotions is strongly tied to social feedback and is partially learned behavior. I have observed human children displaying strong emotions in such a way that I have the impression that sometimes it’s real, though overly dramatic, and sometimes it’s just plain faked.

And, let’s not forget the idea of sociopaths. There are supposedly humans who are not capable of guilt, yet probably most of them act fairly “normal” most of the time because they do what’s expected. My point is that I have just as much reason to doubt human emotions as dog emotions. Thus, the argument about whether or not we are anthropomorphising our dog’s behaviors is rather mute. Trying to prove that they do not have the same emotions as us is fairly worthless. Though, I agree that we should be careful about the assumptions we make about what other animals (human or otherwise) are feeling.