Loving Them to Death: Blame-Displacing Strategies of Animal Shelter Workers and Surrenderers

Stephanie S. Frommer and Arnold Arluke
Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine


This article examines how shelter workers and individuals who surrender their companion animals to shelters manage guilt about killing previously valued animals. Researchers used an ethnographic approach that entailed open-ended interviews and direct observations of workers and surrenderers in a major, metropolitan shelter. Both workers and surrenderers used blame displacement as a mechanism for dealing with their guilt over euthanasia or its possibility. Understanding this coping strategy provides insights into how society continues to relinquish animal companions -- despite the animals' chances of death -- as well as how shelter workers cope with killing the animals they aim to protect.
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Good Dog: Aspects of Humans' Causal Attributions for a Companion Animal's Social Behavior

D. W. Rajecki
Indiana University

Jeffrey Lee Rasmussen
Purdue University

Clinton R. Sanders
University of Connecticut

Susan J. Modlin
Indiana University

Angela M. Holder
Purdue University

Lay theories or assumptions about nonhuman animal mentality undoubtedly influence relations between people and companion animals. In two experiments respondents gave their impressions of the mental and motivational bases of companion animal social behavior through measures of causal attribution. When gauged against the matched actions of a boy, as in the first experiment, respondents attributed a dog's playing (good behavior) to internal, dispositional factors but a dog's biting (bad behavior) to external, situational factors. A second experiment that focused on a dog's bite revealed clear attributional process on the part of observers. Higher ratings of a dog as the cause of a victim's distress predicted higher ratings of a dog's guilt. Higher ratings that a dog had an excuse predicted stronger recommendations for forgiveness. Individual differences in seeing the actor as a "good dog" systematically predicted judgments of severity of the outcome and recommendations for punishment. Discussion of these attributional findings referred to tolerance for companion animal misbehavior and relinquishment decisions. This article illustrates the utility of causal attribution as a tool for the study of popular conceptions of nonhuman animal mind and behavior.

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Contesting Moral Capital in Campaigns Against Animal Liberation

Lyle Munro
Monash University, Australia


This article addresses a countermovement to the animal liberation movement and its campaigns against vivisection, factory farming, and recreational hunting in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. As moderate welfarists, pragmatic animal liberationists (Singer 1975), and radical abolitionists who advocate animal rights, animal protectionists campaign for animals. The countermovement defends acts that animal protectionists decry. Meanwhile, sociologists accord little study to interplay between the movements (Meyer & Staggenborg, l996). In Buechler's and Cylke's collection of 34 papers on social movements (1997), only one paper focused on countermovements, describing the connection between social movement and countermovement as "a continuous dialect of social change" (Mottl, 1980). Although extensive writings exist on the main campaigns of the animal liberation movement, little scholarly material exists on the defenses mounted by the countermovement. This article examines key elements of a values war, a struggle over moral capital waged by animal protectionists and their countermovement opponents.

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Functions of Repetitive Talk to Dogs during Play: Control, Conversation, or Planning?

Robert W. Mitchell and Elizabeth Edmonson
Eastern Kentucky University

This study describes people's repetitive talk when playing with dogs and explores 3 hypotheses about that talk. Each of 23 people played with 2 dogs (one familiar, one unfamiliar). Videorecorded participants spoke about 208 highly repetitive words per interaction. Of all words used, 8 accounted for more than 50%. Phrases most frequently used and repeated were "come on" and "come here." In decreasing order of frequency, sentences ranged from imperatives to attention- getting devices, declaratives about the dogs, and questions. Additional declaratives and talk for the dog rarely occurred. Data support the conclusion that repetitive talk to dogs during play, with some conversational aspects included, mostly attempts to control the dog. Little evidence exists for "on- line" planning in talk to dogs.
 

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