Titel (eng)

Animals in flow - towards the scientific study of intrinsic reward in animals

Autor*in

Sara Hintze   University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna

Jason R. Yee   University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna

Verlag

Wiley

Beschreibung (eng)

The concept of flow, a state of complete absorption in an intrinsically rewarding activity, has played a pivotal role in advancing notions of human well-being beyond minimising suffering towards promoting flourishing and thriving. While flow has played a fundamental role in human positive psychology, it has not yet been explored in non-human animals, leaving an enormous void in our understanding of intrinsic motivation in animals. As ethology and related fields keep progressing in uncovering complex cognitive and affective capacities of non-human animals, we propose the time is ripe to translate the concept of flow to animals. We start by embedding flow in the topic of intrinsic motivation and describe its impact on positive human psychology and potentially positive animal welfare. We then disambiguate flow from related concepts discussed in the animal literature. Next, we derive experimental approaches in animals from the canonical characteristics of flow in humans and provide guidelines for both inducing and assessing flow by focusing on two characteristics that do not necessarily depend on self-report, namely resistance to distraction and time distortion. Not all aspects of the human flow experience are (yet) translatable, but those that are may improve quality of life in captive non-human animals.

Sprache des Objekts

Englisch

Datum

2022

Rechte

Dieses Werk bzw. dieser Inhalt steht unter einer
CC BY-NC 4.0 - Creative Commons Namensnennung - Nicht-kommerziell 4.0 International Lizenz.

CC BY-NC 4.0 International

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Klassifikation

Animals; Humans; Quality of Life; Motivation; Reward; Animal Welfare; Animal Husbandry

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