The Science and Social Validity of Companion Animal Welfare: Functionally Defined Parameters in a Multidisciplinary Field

Social validity refers to the social significance and acceptability of intervention goals, procedures, and outcomes. Animal practitioners, who are often guided by the principles of ABA, lack the benefit of verbal participants (at least with respect to target animals) with which to assess a client's needs and preferences. The study of a learner's welfare is useful for determining areas where intervention is needed or how the learner feels about an intervention that is underway. Three tenets of animal welfare measurement include physiological function, naturalistic behavior, and affect, where affect refers to private events, including emotions, which are a function of the same variables and contingencies responsible for controlling public behavior. The development of new technologies allows us to look "under the skin" and account for subjective experiences that can now be observed objectively. We introduce the reader to tools available from the animal welfare sciences for the objective measurement of social validity from the learner's perspective.

What factors underlie attitudes regarding protective mask use during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Two studies examine psychological and demographic factors that predict attitudes toward mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. These studies differentiate pro-mask from anti-mask attitudes. Political conservatism, younger age, and gender predicted anti-mask attitudes but were unrelated to pro-mask attitudes. Psychological reactance was associated with anti-mask attitudes, over and above demographic variables. Empathy, trust in healthcare professionals, and perceived normativity of mask wearing were associated with pro-mask attitudes, over and above demographic variables. These studies suggest that demographic variables such as political orientation and age are associated with anti-mask but not pro-mask attitudes, but also that psychological factors differentially predict anti- and pro-mask attitudes over and above demographic factors.

Misinformation sharing and social media fatigue during COVID-19: An affordance and cognitive load perspective

Social media plays a significant role during pandemics such as COVID-19, as it enables people to share news as well as personal experiences and viewpoints with one another in real-time, globally. Building off the affordance lens and cognitive load theory, we investigate how motivational factors and personal attributes influence social media fatigue and the sharing of unverified information during the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, we develop a model which we analyse using the structural equation modelling and neural network techniques with data collected from young adults in Bangladesh (N = 433). The results show that people, who are driven by self-promotion and entertainment, and those suffering from deficient self-regulation, are more likely to share unverified information. Exploration and religiosity correlated negatively with the sharing of unverified information. However, exploration also increased social media fatigue. Our findings indicate that the different use purposes of social media introduce problematic consequences, in particular, increased misinformation sharing.

Assessing and Enhancing the Welfare of Animals with Equivocal and Reliable Cues

Simple Summary

Actions of human caretakers influence the experience of animals under their care, in zoos and elsewhere. These animals often learn to associate stimuli—sights, smells, sounds—with desirable outcomes such as feedings, training sessions, or other positive experiences. Here, we propose that a conscientious approach to providing reliable cues about daily events and observing animal behavior in response to both reliable and uncertain cues can help caretakers support and assess animal welfare.

Abstract

The actions of human caretakers strongly influence animals living under human care. Here, we consider how intentional and unintentional signals provided by caretakers can inform our assessment of animals’ well-being as well as help to support it. Our aim is to assist in further developing techniques to learn animals’ affective state from their behavior and to provide simple suggestions for how animal caretakers’ behavior can support animal welfare. We suggest that anticipatory behavior towards expected rewards is related to decision-making behavior as viewed through the cognitive bias lens. By considering the predictions of the theories associated with anticipatory behavior and cognitive bias, we propose to use specific cues to probe the cumulative affective state of animals. Additionally, our commentary draws on the logic of reward sensitivity and judgement bias theories to develop a framework that suggests how reliable and equivocal signals may influence animals’ affective states. Application of this framework may be useful in supporting the welfare of animals in human care.

Motivation but not valence modulates neuroticism-dependent cingulate cortex and insula activity

Neuroticism has been found to specifically modulate amygdala activations during differential processing of valence and motivation while other brain networks yet are unexplored for associated effects. The main purpose of this study was to investigate whether neural mechanisms processing valence or motivation are prone to neuroticism in the salience network (SN), a network that is anchored in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the anterior insula. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and an approach/avoid emotional pictures task to investigate brain activations modulated by pictures' valence or motivational status between high and low neurotic individuals. We found that neuroticism-dependent SN and the parahippocampal-fusiform area activations were modulated by motivation but not valence. Valence in contrast interacted with neuroticism in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex. We suggested that neuroticism modulated valence and motivation processing, however, under the influence of the two distinct networks. Neuroticism modulated the motivation through the SN while it modulated the valence through the orbitofrontal networks.

Psychometric properties of the Affect Phobia Test

The aim of this study was to make the first evaluation of the psychometric properties of the Affect Phobia Test, using the Swedish translation - a test developed to screen the ability to experience, express and regulate emotions. Data was collected from a clinical sample (N = 82) of patients with depression and/or anxiety participating in randomized controlled trial of Internet-based affect-focused treatment, and a university student sample (N = 197). The internal consistency for the total score was satisfactory (Clinical sample α = 0.88/Student sample α = 0.84) as well as for all the affective domains, except Anger/Assertion (α = 0.44/0.36), Sadness/Grief (α = 0.24/0.46) and Attachment/Closeness (α = 0.67/0.69). Test retest reliability was satisfactory (ICC > 0.77) for the total score and for all the affective domains except for Sadness/Grief (ICC = 0.04). The exploratory factor analysis resulted in a six-factor solution and did only moderately match the test's original affective domains. An empirical cut-off between the clinical and the university student sample were calculated and yielded a cut-off of 72 points. As expected, the Affect Phobia test showed negative significant correlations in the clinical group with measures on depression (rxy  = -0.229; p < 0.01) and anxiety (rxy  = -0.315; p < 0.05). The conclusion is that the psychometric properties are satisfactory for the total score of the Affect Phobia Test but not for some of the test's affective domains. Consequently the domains should not be used as subscales. The test can discriminate between individuals who seek help for psychological problems and those who do not.

Approach–Avoidance Motivation and Emotion: Convergence and Divergence

In this concluding piece, we identify and discuss various aspects of convergence and, to a lesser degree, divergence in the ideas expressed in the contributions to this special section. These contributions emphatically illustrate that approach–avoidance motivation is integral to the scientific study of emotion. It is our hope that the articles herein will facilitate cross-talk among researchers and research traditions, and will lead to a more thorough understanding of the role of approach–avoidance motivation in emotion.