Emotional reactions in non-human animals and social-functional theories of emotion

Abstract

The debate about animal emotions relies heavily on empirical evidence, which is often open to multiple interpretations. This ambiguity allows researchers at either end of the spectrum to perceive support for their positions in study results. Thus, evidence reported by Cook and colleagues (2018)-that dogs' trait aggression is associated with their amygdala activation when watching their caregivers feed a fake dog-may be interpreted by some as neural evidence for jealousy in dogs and by others as an artefact of the study design. I argue that the discussion should be complemented with a greater consideration of theoretical arguments about the (social) functions of emotions. Theory and research on the intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of emotions are consistent with the hypothesis that various non-human social animals can experience and communicate emotions, although the labeling of these emotions is not self-evident. Gerben A. van Kleef is professor of social psychology at the University of Amsterdam. His main research themes revolve around the social effects of emotions, the antecedents and consequences of power and hierarchy, and the social dynamics of norm violation versus norm adherence. Website Whether animals have emotions has been debated for more than a century, dating back at least to Darwin's seminal work The expression of the emotions in man and animals (1872). The topic continues to divide scientists to this day. Some scholars point to studies that have provided evidence of emotion in a wide variety of non-human species; others warn that projection of human-like emotional states onto non-human animals constitutes a form of anthropomorphism. The problem is that empirical demonstrations of animal emotions are elusive because the data of most (if not all) studies tend to be open to multiple interpretations. I propose that this problem can be alleviated by complementing the debate over empirical findings with a more thorough consideration of theory. My point is illustrated by Cook, Prichard, Spivak, and Berns's (2018) study of emotional responses in dogs. Cook and colleagues report evidence that temperamental dogs show increased amygdala activation when watching food being given to a (fake) rival dog rather than to themselves (or an inanimate bucket); they interpret this as evidence for a form of jealousy. As is clear from some of the commentaries on their target article, other scholars are reluctant to accept the results as evidence of jealousy in dogs, mostly based on inherent limitations of the study