What Is so Positive about Positive Animal Welfare?—A Critical Review of the Literature
It is claimed that positive animal welfare (PAW) developed over the last decade in reaction to animal welfare focusing too much on avoiding negatives. However, it remains unclear what PAW adds to the animal welfare literature and to what extent its ideas are new. Through a critical review of the PAW literature, we aim to […]
Understanding the multiple conceptions of animal welfare
Academics working on animal welfare typically consider the animal’s affective state (eg the experience of pain), biological functioning (eg the presence of injuries), and sometimes naturalness (eg access to pasture), but it is unclear how these different factors are weighed in different cases. We argue that progress can be informed by systematically observing how ordinary […]
Differences in stress and happiness between owners who perceive their dogs as well behaved or poorly behaved when they are left alone
This study was performed to identify differences between a group of 36 dog owners who reported separation-related behavioral problems in their dogs and a group of 40 dog owners who perceived their dogs as well behaved in their absence. The variables compared between these groups were attachment, trainability, human-dog relationship, owner-dog compatibility, happiness, and stress. […]
Who is happy?
A flood of new studies explores people’s subjective well-being (SWB). Frequent positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and a global sense of satisfaction with life define high SWB. These studies reveal that happiness and life satisfaction are similarly available to the young and the old, women and men, blacks and whites, the rich and the working-class. […]
Positive psychology-an introduction
A science of positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and positive institutions promises to improve quality of life and prevent the pathologies that arise when life is barren and meaningless. The exclusive focus on pathology that has dominated so much of our discipline results in a model of the human being lacking the positive features […]
Chimpanzees with positive welfare are happier, extraverted, and emotionally stable
Facilities housing captive animals are full of staff who, every day, interact with the animals under their care. The expertise and familiarity of staff can be used to monitor animal welfare by means of questionnaires. It was the goal of our study to examine the association between chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) welfare, happiness, and personality. To […]