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My Fear Is Not, and Never Will Be, Your Fear: On Emotions and Feelings in Animals
Do nonhuman animals (henceforth, animals) have emotions, and if so, are these similar to ours? This opinion piece aims to add to the recent debate about this question and provides a critical re-evaluation of what can be concluded about animal and human emotions. Emotions, and their cognitive interpr...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer International Publishing
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9382921/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36042781 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00099-x |
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author | Kret, Mariska E. Massen, Jorg J. M. de Waal, Frans B. M. |
author_facet | Kret, Mariska E. Massen, Jorg J. M. de Waal, Frans B. M. |
author_sort | Kret, Mariska E. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Do nonhuman animals (henceforth, animals) have emotions, and if so, are these similar to ours? This opinion piece aims to add to the recent debate about this question and provides a critical re-evaluation of what can be concluded about animal and human emotions. Emotions, and their cognitive interpretation, i.e., feelings, serve important survival functions. Emotions, we believe, can exist without feelings and are unconsciously influencing our behavior more than we think, and possibly more so than feelings do. Given that emotions are expressed in body and brain, they can be inferred from these measures. We view feelings primarily as private states, which may be similar across closely related species but remain mostly inaccessible to science. Still, combining data acquired through behavioral observation with data obtained from noninvasive techniques (e.g., eyetracking, thermography, hormonal samples) and from cognitive tasks (e.g., decision-making paradigms, cognitive bias, attentional bias) provides new information about the inner states of animals, and possibly about their feelings as well. Given that many other species show behavioral, neurophysiological, hormonal, and cognitive responses to valenced stimuli equivalent to human responses, it seems logical to speak of animal emotions and sometimes even of animal feelings. At the very least, the contemporary multi-method approach allows us to get closer than ever before. We conclude with recommendations on how the field should move forward. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9382921 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Springer International Publishing |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-93829212022-08-29 My Fear Is Not, and Never Will Be, Your Fear: On Emotions and Feelings in Animals Kret, Mariska E. Massen, Jorg J. M. de Waal, Frans B. M. Affect Sci Commentary / Opinions Do nonhuman animals (henceforth, animals) have emotions, and if so, are these similar to ours? This opinion piece aims to add to the recent debate about this question and provides a critical re-evaluation of what can be concluded about animal and human emotions. Emotions, and their cognitive interpretation, i.e., feelings, serve important survival functions. Emotions, we believe, can exist without feelings and are unconsciously influencing our behavior more than we think, and possibly more so than feelings do. Given that emotions are expressed in body and brain, they can be inferred from these measures. We view feelings primarily as private states, which may be similar across closely related species but remain mostly inaccessible to science. Still, combining data acquired through behavioral observation with data obtained from noninvasive techniques (e.g., eyetracking, thermography, hormonal samples) and from cognitive tasks (e.g., decision-making paradigms, cognitive bias, attentional bias) provides new information about the inner states of animals, and possibly about their feelings as well. Given that many other species show behavioral, neurophysiological, hormonal, and cognitive responses to valenced stimuli equivalent to human responses, it seems logical to speak of animal emotions and sometimes even of animal feelings. At the very least, the contemporary multi-method approach allows us to get closer than ever before. We conclude with recommendations on how the field should move forward. Springer International Publishing 2022-03-10 /pmc/articles/PMC9382921/ /pubmed/36042781 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00099-x Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Commentary / Opinions Kret, Mariska E. Massen, Jorg J. M. de Waal, Frans B. M. My Fear Is Not, and Never Will Be, Your Fear: On Emotions and Feelings in Animals |
title | My Fear Is Not, and Never Will Be, Your Fear: On Emotions and Feelings in Animals |
title_full | My Fear Is Not, and Never Will Be, Your Fear: On Emotions and Feelings in Animals |
title_fullStr | My Fear Is Not, and Never Will Be, Your Fear: On Emotions and Feelings in Animals |
title_full_unstemmed | My Fear Is Not, and Never Will Be, Your Fear: On Emotions and Feelings in Animals |
title_short | My Fear Is Not, and Never Will Be, Your Fear: On Emotions and Feelings in Animals |
title_sort | my fear is not, and never will be, your fear: on emotions and feelings in animals |
topic | Commentary / Opinions |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9382921/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36042781 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00099-x |
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