Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 32759
Devising a Paradigm for the Assessment of Guilt across Species

Authors: Trisha S. Malhotra

Abstract:

While there exist frameworks to study the induction, manifestation, duration and general nature of emotions like shame, guilt, embarrassment and pride in humans, the same cannot be said for other species. This is because such 'complex' emotions have situational inductions and manifestations that supposedly vary due to differences between and within different species' ethology. This paper looks at the socio-adaptive functions of guilt to posit why this emotion might be observed across varying species. Primarily, the experimental paradigm of guilt-assessment in domesticated dogs is critiqued for lack of ethological consideration in its measurement and analysis. It is argued that a paradigm for guilt-assessment should measure the species-specific prosocial approach behavior instead of the immediate feedback of the 'guilty'. Finally, it is asserted that the origin of guilt is subjective and if it must be studied across a plethora of species, its definition must be tailored to fit accordingly.

Keywords: Guilt, assessment, dogs, prosocial approach behavior, empathy, species, ethology.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2571877

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 834

References:


[1] Barrett K. C. (1995). A functionalist approach to shame and guilt. In: Tangney J. P., Fischer K. W., editors. Self-Conscious Emotions: The Psychology of Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment, and Pride. Guilford Press; New York, NY, USA. pp. 25–63.
[2] Barrett, L. F. (2016). How Emotions Are Made: The New Science of the Mind and Brain. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
[3] Baumeister R. F., Stillwell A. M., Heatherton T. F. (1994). Guilt: an interpersonal approach. Psychol. Bull. 115, 243–26710.1037/0033-2909.115.2.243.
[4] Ben-Ami Bartal, I., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2011). Empathy and prosocial behavior in rats. Science, 334,1427-1430. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1210789.
[5] Berti A.E., Garattoni C., Venturini B. (2000). The understanding of sadness, guilt, and shame in 5-, 7-, and 9-year-old children. Genet. Soc. Gen. Psychol; 126:293–318.
[6] Bräuer, J., Schönefeld, K., & Call, J. (2013). When do dogs help humans? Applied Animal Behaviour Science,148(1-2), 138-149. doi: 10.1016/j.applanim.2013.07.009.
[7] Bybee J., Merisca R., Velasco R. (1998). The development of reactions of guilt-producing events. In: Bybee J., editor. Guilt and Children. Academic Press; San Diego, CA, USA. pp. 185–213.
[8] Carni S., Petrocchi N., Del Miglio C., Mancini F., Couyoumdjian A. (2013). Intrapsychic and interpersonal guilt: A critical review of the recent literature. Cogn. Process; 14:333–346. doi: 10.1007/s10339-013-0570-4.
[9] Cottrell, C. A., &Neuberg, S. L. (2005). Different emotional reactions to different groups: A sociofunctionalthreatbased approach to ‘prejudice’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 770–789.
[10] Dempsey, H. (2017). A Comparison of the Social-Adaptive Perspective and Functionalist Perspective on Guilt and Shame. Behavioral Sciences, 7(4), 83. doi:10.3390/bs7040083.
[11] Emily M. Sanford, Emma R. Burt, Julia E. Meyers-Manor. (2018). Timmy’s in the well: Empathy and prosocial helping in dogs. Learning& Behavior; DOI: 10.3758/s13420-018-0332-3.
[12] Ferguson T. J., Ives D., Eyre H. L. (1997). All Is Fair in Love, But Not War: The Management of Emotions in Dyadic Relationships; Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of Society for Research in Child Development; Washington, DC, USA.
[13] Guilt | Definition of guilt in English by Oxford Dictionaries. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/guilt.
[14] Hecht, Julie et al. (2012). Behavioral assessment and owner perceptions of behaviours associated with guilt in dogs. Applied Animal BehaviourScience , Volume 139 , Issue 1 , 134 – 142.
[15] Hodges, W. (2018, January 23). Why Does Your Cat Bring You Gifts? Retrieved from https://consciouscat.net/2018/01/24/cat-bring-gifts/.
[16] Hoffman, M. L. (1982). Development of prosocial motivation: Empathy and guilt. In N. Eisenberg (Ed.), The Development of Prosocial Behavior (pp. 281–313). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
[17] Horowitz, A. (2009). Disambiguating the "guilty look": Salient prompts to a familiar dog behaviour. Behavioural Processes. 81(3). 447-452.
[18] Huber, A., Barber, A. L. A., Faragó, T., Müller, C. A., & Huber, L. (2017). Investigating emotional contagion in dogs (Canisfamiliaris) to emotional sounds of humans and conspecifics. Animal Cognition, 20(4), 703–715. doi:10.1007/s10071-017-1092-8.
[19] Kuhne, F., Höβler, J. C., & Struwe, R. (2014). Emotions in dogs being petted by a familiar or unfamiliar person: Validating behavioural indicators of emotional states using heart rate variability. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 161, 113-120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2014.09.020.
[20] Marten, K., &Psarakos, S. (1994). Evidence of self-awareness in the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiopstruncatus). In S. T. Parker, R. W. Mitchell, & M. L. Boccia (Eds.), Self-awareness in animals and humans: Developmental perspectives (pp. 361-379). New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511565526.026.
[21] Ostojić, L., Tkalčić, M., & Clayton, N. S. (2015). Are owners’ reports of their dogs’ ’guilty look’ influenced by the dogs’ action and evidence of the misdeed? Behavioural Processes, 111, 97–100. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2014.12.010.
[22] Plotnik, J. M., de Waal, F. B., & Reiss, D. (2006). Self-recognition in an Asian elephant. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,103(45), 17053-7.
[23] Plotnik JM, de Waal FBM. (2014). Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) reassure others in distress. PeerJ 2: e278 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.278.
[24] Potter, A., & Mills, D. S. (2015). Domestic Cats (Felissilvestriscatus) Do Not Show Signs of Secure Attachment to Their Owners. PLOS ONE, 10(9), e0135109. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0135109.
[25] Prior H, Schwarz A, Gu¨ntu¨rku¨n O (2008). Mirror-induced behavior in the magpie (Pica pica): Evidence of self-recognition. PLoSBiol 6(8): e202. doi:10.1371/journal. pbio.0060202.
[26] Ward V. (2015). A dog's guilty look is just a myth, experts claim. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/pets/11822498/A-dogs-guilty-look-is-just-a-myth-experts-claim.html.