In Defence of Dogs: Why Dogs Need Our Understanding by John Bradshaw

Author:John Bradshaw [Bradshaw, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781846142963
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2011-07-11T04:00:00+00:00

The three components of emotion. Emotion I is the sum of changes in hormone levels and in the nervous system. Emotion II is the outward expression of emotion, for example in body-language and vocalizations. These can be detected by other dogs (and people), whose reactions can be perceived and may subsequently modify how emotions are felt and reacted to. Emotion III is the subjective experience of the emotion itself, for example, ‘fear’. Arrows indicate interactions.

What is the point, then, in also labelling both the underlying physiology and the associated behaviour as ‘emotion’? In the context of improving our understanding of dogs, this model emphasizes that if we can measure a change in the underlying physiology (for example, a sudden increase in the stress hormone adrenalin), and at the same time observe the corresponding behaviour (the animal runs away), we can be reasonably sure that the dog is also experiencing the matching emotion (fear). Quite what that experience is like for the dog, we can never entirely know – just as we cannot even know precisely how another human being is feeling. Feelings are private, but that does not mean that we cannot and do not take them into account. When dealing with other people, we just make a best guess and proceed accordingly – and if our first guess is wrong, there is a good chance that the other person will let us know. Dogs, however, may be less good at letting us know when we misjudge them, or perhaps we are not as clever as we should be at decoding their signals. Either way, what is important is trying our hardest to understand their emotional lives.

My second reason for considering this three-level conceptualization of emotion to be helpful is that it proposes that emotions are useful to the animal: they act as special-purpose information-processing systems, alongside the general systems of learning and cognition (to which humans have added symbolic language). Emotions are an essential aid to survival, and if dogs possess the two ‘lower’ levels (and without a doubt they do), then it is difficult to maintain that they do not also experience the third level, the emotional reactions.

My third reason is that this conceptualization emphasizes an evolutionary continuum. It posits that human emotions, while possibly unique in some respects, have evolved from those of mammals, which in turn have evolved from those of reptiles, and so on. Unless one subscribes to the view that human-type consciousness and self-awareness are absolutely essential to the experience of all emotion, it is very difficult to deny – even from such an apparently dry, purely scientific viewpoint – that dogs must experience at least some form of emotion.

Alongside the many advantages of this model, however, there is one major disadvantage: the implicit assumption that subjective emotion (Emotion III) always emerges as overt behaviour (Emotion II). In humans, most emotions are also linked to facial expressions that vary little from culture to culture, thus serving as a near-universal language of feelings. However, we

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