Dogs take on a number of roles in human lives, from free-ranging animals in our streets to companions in our homes and working and assistance animals throughout our society. The unique bond between dogs and humans has resulted in an explosion of interest and research on this species and their interactions with people. Yet there is not as much cross talk between researchers focusing on canine cognition and those studying canine-human interactions. The aim of the 69th Nebraska Symposium on Motivation was to bring together researchers from psychology, biology, neuroscience, anthropology, and social work to delve deeper into the canine-human bond. The authors in this book describe evolutionary, hormonal, and neuroscience perspectives for understanding dog behavior and cognition for both companion dogs and free-ranging dogs on the streets of India. We end with experts in canine-human interaction who report on the effects of interacting with dogs on the psychology and well-being of college students. Only by combining perspectives to study both ends of the leash can we truly understand our unique connection with dogs.
Echoing content presented at the 69th Annual Nebraska Symposium on Motivation focused on Canine Cognition and the Human Bond, this chapter shares selective results of efficacy trials examining effects of animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) conducted in a university setting. The chapter focuses on two multi-year studies examining effects of (1) a 10-min animal visitation program (AVP) and (2) comparing effects of a 4-week evidenced-based stress prevention programs featuring varying levels of human animal interaction (HAI) with registered canine therapy teams. Both studies focus on campus-based AAIs aimed at preventing or alleviating university student stress and distress to mitigate the development of mental health disorders and academic failure in typical and at-risk university students. Outcomes across various developmental domains are examined including socioemotional (e.g., students’ momentary emotion states), physiological (e.g., basal, diurnal, and momentary cortisol and alpha amylase levels), cognitive (e.g., executive function), and behavioral (e.g., study skills and learning strategies) while considering student risk factors associated with the development of stress-related psychopathology including a history or presence of mood disorders (e.g., clinical depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, etc.), academic failure, and developmentally-based learning challenges. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Free-ranging dogs form the majority of the domesticated dog population in the world. They are a ubiquitous presence in many Southeast Asian countries, especially India, and were the first animals to colonize urban settlements. They spend their entire lives on streets unsupervised by humans and fending for themselves. In this chapter, we summarize the life history strategies of these free-ranging dogs and the various ways they have adapted to the urban human-dominated environment. These dogs are non-aggressive by nature, and their hours of activity overlap with those of humans. Mother dogs spend a large proportion of their time taking care of pups, which decreases with increasing pup age. In these, she may be aided by other female relatives and, sometimes, males in the group. Pups typically spend the majority of their time sleeping and playing, and in spite of the high levels of care received by them, early life mortality is as high as 81%. Humans play an important role in the lives of free-ranging dogs. Despite humans being a major cause of pup mortality, pregnant females choose to give birth in dens close to human habitations. Their near-constant interactions with humans in different capacities have inculcated in them a noteworthy understanding of human behavioral cues and adaptable responses to human gestures and intent. These dogs also depend on human-generated resources for their sustenance displaying characteristics of efficient scavengers as well as urban resource exploiters. Free-ranging dogs are thus an intriguing model system for understanding the evolution of the dog-human relationship in a natural environment.
The domestic dog (Canis familiaris) plays a unique role in human society, functioning primarily as a social companion in millions of households worldwide. Considering this special relationship, researchers have examined the various ways in which dogs interact with humans and how these interactions may facilitate or even stem from an underlying attachment between dogs and humans. As a result, many different measures have been developed to evaluate how various factors influence dog-human attachment and interactions. Current advancements in the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in dogs have also allowed researchers to explore relationships between neural and behavioral responses, demonstrating additional evidence for dog-human attachment. In this chapter, we discuss different measures that have been used to evaluate various aspects of the dog-human bond and how fMRI can provide new insights in this area of research. Specifically, multimodal approaches combining behavioral and cognitive measures with fMRI provide the most comprehensive method of evaluating dog-human attachment. Additional considerations, such as utilizing neural models of human attachment as a reference for canine models and specific study designs that could be used to measure the neural attachment network in dogs, are also discussed to help inform future research on the dog-human bond.
Domestication has profoundly changed dogs' morphology, physiology, and behavior compared to that of wolves. However, it remains unclear how dogs evolved the social capacities allowing them to effectively interact and bond with humans. Since endocrine systems may be prime targets of selection and driving forces of behavioral changes, some authors suggested that domestication changed dog's glucocorticoid and oxytocin profiles, facilitating their human-directed behavior. However, studies directly comparing dogs' and wolves' hormonal and behavioral profiles while accounting for developmental effects are largely lacking. Here we summarize the dog domestication process, the functions of the prime hormonal systems likely to have been affected by domestication, and three studies investigating human-directed behavior in similarly raised wolves and dogs, as well as dogs with different life experiences (pet dogs, free-ranging dogs). The studies demonstrate that similarly raised wolves and dogs showed some behavioral differences in their human-directed behaviors, yet, at the same time, more similarities in their hormonal response to human contact than the different dog populations. Indeed, the different dog populations behaved similarly but showed different hormonal reactions when interacting with humans. Together, these results point to the added value of approaching questions from both a behavioral and hormonal perspective and highlight the need to carefully control for the animals' previous experiences in comparative studies on domestication-related effects. We conclude that the current data question a general, clear-cut domestication effect as predicted by the most prominent domestication hypotheses (emotional reactivity and hyper-sociability hypotheses) and rather suggest that life experiences during development may play a key role in shaping dogs' responses to humans.
Research on alcohol and sexual assault has increased greatly in quantity and sophistication since the association between the two was first recognized. Using my personal experience of 30 years of sexual assault research as a frame, I trace the development of important breakthroughs and insights in understanding alcohol-related sexual assault. Among the important milestones are the identification of incapacitated rape as a distinct and prevalent form of victimization among college students and recognition of the close linkage between alcohol-related sexual assault and sexual activity such as hookups. Emerging research points toward the importance of drinking environments and individual differences in motivations to frequent these environments, in understanding how potential perpetrators and victims are brought together. Prevention is challenging given the variety of processes underlying sexual assault. However, some efforts, both individual and those targeting drinking environments and policy, have achieved some success in reducing sexual assault and increasing our understanding of the mechanisms underlying alcohol-related sexual assault.
The University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus, has a long-standing canine facilitated stress reduction program for students titled Building Academic Retention through K9s, or B.A.R.K. Established in 2012, B.A.R.K. provides opportunities for college students and the broader community to interact with therapy dogs as a means of reducing stress and homesickness and fostering interpersonal connections. One aim of this chapter is to share insights gleaned over 10 years of B.A.R.K. research and programming including factors related to the selection of dog-handler teams, the responsibilities of dogs and handlers participating in canine-assisted interventions, and the variability in intervention dosage. A second aim of the chapter is to showcase innovations in the field of canine-assisted interventions and cast an eye to future directions that will expand the boundaries of canine-assisted interventions, allowing new empirical territory to be forged.
Sexual violence and alcohol use are critical and interrelated concerns for the US military. The current chapter advances the science and practice of sexual assault prevention for military service members by articulating a rationale for integrated alcohol use and sexual assault prevention for service members. In this chapter, integrated alcohol use and sexual assault prevention approaches are operationalized as interventions that include active alcohol use intervention administered in combination with sexual assault prevention programming. Strategies for addressing the ways in which alcohol use impacts sexual aggression, sexual victimization, and bystander intervention in prevention efforts are reviewed. Progress toward developing integrated alcohol use and sexual assault prevention approaches for civilian populations and military populations is also discussed.
Alcohol misuse (AM) and sexual violence (SV) are long-standing public health problems that were addressed in the 2021 Nebraska Symposium on Motivation titled Alcohol and Sexual Violence. This chapter reviews each symposium chapter’s contributions to the SV-AM prevention literature and implications for research. We document prevalence of these problems and their devastating consequences for individuals and society. We describe other research findings, gaps in research, and ideas that can improve SV research and policy. These include the role of heavy alcohol use in SV, alcohol-related black outs in SV cases, and the role of sexual scripts in alcohol-involved SV. We discuss sexual standards (i.e., personal attitudes and cultural norms about what sexual behaviors are appropriate) and make the case that SV prevention approaches should encourage examination of personal sexual standards and honest communication about standards with potential sexual partners. We make recommendations for research, policy changes, and interventions for alcohol-involved SV that include ways to enhance reporting, investigation, and adjudication of SV cases. We conclude that SV research is severely underfunded and propose to rightsize its research portfolio by establishing the National Sexual Violence Research Institute with $42 million per year in dedicated funding.
Sexual aggression remains a significant public health concern, and alcohol intoxication is a key contributor to its occurrence. Despite its prevalence and harmful consequences, interventions addressing the specific mechanisms underlying alcohol-involved sexual aggression are lacking. In the present chapter, we argue that an experimental medicine approach to identifying, measuring, and targeting postulated mechanisms contributing to sexual aggression would enhance these intervention efforts. To that end, we review the extant research on sexually aggressive behavior, focusing on key cognitive, physiological, and emotional mechanisms. Within each of these areas, we examine the research regarding alcohol’s relationship to the mechanism as well as the existence and effectiveness of interventions targeting said mechanisms. Finally, we present as an exemplar a study that used an experimental medicine approach to investigate the utility of targeting emotion regulation as a mechanism underlying alcohol-involved sexual aggression, with additional suggestions for other novel investigations utilizing this paradigm. We conclude that by capitalizing on both new and established rigorous experimental methods, researchers can identify and target the mechanisms of behavior change underlying alcohol-involved sexual aggression, thereby increasing the effectiveness of sexual aggression prevention and intervention programs.
Answers to questions about alcohol's causal role in sexual aggression require experiments that randomly assign people to drink conditions and evaluate their likelihood of engaging in sexually aggressive behavior after consuming an alcoholic beverage as compared to a nonalcoholic beverage. These studies require well-validated experimental analogues of sexually aggressive behavior. The premise of this chapter is that additional analogues need to be developed in order to fully understand the etiology of sexual violence and develop evidence-based policy, prevention, and treatment initiatives. This chapter begins with assumptions and definitions and then briefly reviews alcohol administration and sexual assault etiology research for readers not familiar with this literature. The heart of the chapter is a discussion of sexual aggression experimental analogues: What are the essential elements of sexual aggression that need to be included in analogues? What are the strengths and limitations of existing analogues? Is the same analogue likely to be equally effective at identifying perpetrators with different motives, backgrounds, and situational preferences? How can virtual reality and confederate paradigms advance knowledge? I want to encourage new researchers to join this field and contribute to our understanding of alcohol's role in sexual aggression.
Sexual violence perpetrated toward sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals is a significant public health problem. Although proximal alcohol use is one of the most well-established contributors to sexual violence perpetration toward heterosexual, cisgender women, its effects on the perpetration of sexual violence toward SGM individuals are rarely studied and, as a result, poorly understood. In this chapter, we aim to catalyze work in this area by advancing an integrative theoretical model of alcohol-facilitated sexual violence perpetration toward SGM individuals. Situated in a heuristic stigma-based framework, the proposed integrative model (1) organizes risk and resilience factors across the social ecology, and (2) explains the proximal mechanisms by which alcohol use facilitates sexual violence perpetration toward SGM individuals. This integrated model is used to inform our “call to action” that includes recommendations to strengthen the rigor of future research, with a particular focus on assessment of the proximal and temporal effects of alcohol on sexual violence perpetration. Additionally, we identify theoretical-based targets for prevention at multiple levels of the social ecology.
Our capacity to pay attention—to employ top-down attention by directing our focus toward one idea or task while excluding from our consciousness a host of competing stimuli and thoughts—is key to every human achievement. But top-down attention is a limited resource that fatigues with use. Research demonstrates that having contact with nature, even in otherwise dense urban settings, can restore our ability to focus. Thus, access to natural elements in the form of parks, interconnected green corridors, street trees, rain gardens, green roofs, and green walls do more that provide attractive places for people to live, work, and play. They help people recover from the attentional fatigue that is part of everyday life. In doing so, these landscape elements help us achieve our goals in life. One implication of these findings is that we should redouble our efforts to ensure that we provide nature at every doorstep.
The burgeoning study of access to nature for public health and well-being is currently seeking to find doses of nature needed for different health benefits, including efficient cognitive processing. This information is important to guide clinical practice and the greening of schools and neighborhoods. Yet with children in particular, more is lost than gained by narrowing cognition to tests of attention, memory, and problem-solving, important as these dimensions of functioning may be. Given freedom in natural areas, children know nature with full-bodied physicality and emotion, often within social relationships. Using the framework of ecological psychology and supplementing it with other research perspectives, this chapter outlines different dimensions of knowing nature that can contribute to healthy development in childhood and adolescence. It suggests benefits that the natural world affords beyond opportunities that built environments provide, using the capabilities approach to human development, which includes having an influence over one's environment and living in relationship with plants, animals, and the world of nature as dimensions of a fully realized life. The chapter concludes with examples of local and regional partnerships that give young people roles in regenerating natural areas and helping to define the types of nature spaces that meet their needs at different ages.
What role might the natural environment play in resilience? Remarkably, there has been little connection between the nature-health research and resilience research and theory. In this chapter, I first suggest that nature ought to figure more centrally within human resilience literature and frameworks. This chapter aims to bridge the divide between literatures by considering the evidence that nature may be a resilience factor that can moderate the impact of risk or adversity on health and functioning. Second, I argue that due to a preoccupation with the direct effects of nature on health, the role of the natural environment as a moderator of the relation between risk factors or adversity and health outcomes is under-appreciated and under-explored. Acting as a moderator or buffer, nearby nature or green space may have the potential to attenuate the relation between risk and health, to dampen negative health outcomes among vulnerable populations and ultimately, thereby, to reduce health disparities. Four outcomes are examined: mental health, physical health, birth weight, and academic achievement. For each of these outcomes, I consider: the impact of risk and adversity, including poverty; evidence of nature's moderating effect; and plausible explanatory pathways (i.e., mediated moderation), with a focus on executive functioning and social connection. I then briefly consider access to nature as an environmental justice issue. Is it the case that while nature may have the potential to mitigate health disparities, those most in need have the least access? I close with implications for future research.
The way that psychologists conceptualize the nature of visual perception directly influences the way they conceptualize the environment from a psychological standpoint. For that reason, commentary on the contributions to this symposium volume addressing the relationship between the natural environment and psychological functioning is organized with regard to the implicit approach to visual perception each chapter adopts. Such theoretical commitments shape how we think about the environment from a psychological perspective, the kind of research questions we ask, the particular methodologies that are employed and, in some cases, the practical applications that stem from them. This examination of the volume's chapters is preceded by a discussion of the complexities attending a definition of the natural environment, and a proposal that psychologists might base that definition on those environmental properties that perceivers attend to when designating an environment as natural. Having specified those perceivable properties, we can proceed to inquire on what basis perceivers express greater preference for natural environments. In the course of these reflections, other pertinent issues are discussed, including environmental preference in relation to evolutionary theory; affordances and environmental preference; and psychological restoration as a process of re-establishing functional stability. Particular attention is paid to the place of perception-action in relation to the environment.
