Aggression Towards Animals May Be a First Step
Over the last couple of decades, there have been a host of studies examining the link between human violence towards animals and people. Some of this research has discovered how companion animals in domestic violence situations are particularly at risk, while other studies have revealed that acts of animal cruelty by younger people may be indicative of the propensity for violence later in life. Though most research explored limited samples “such as university students and offender populations,” in order to quantify and establish more solid links to the general public, the researchers involved in this Australian study extended their questions to a much larger population. In this case, “questionnaires were administered by telephone to a random sample of adults throughout Australia, resulting in 598 responses from 205 males and 393 females.”
The questionnaire was designed to quantify how aggressive an individual is and how this aggression may manifest itself, and then relate the findings to a propensity for aggression towards animals. The researchers used a “Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire,” (AQ) previously employed in other studies, asking respondents to rate statements such as “I have threatened people I know,” or, “I flare up quickly but get over it quickly” on a Likert scale. This was followed by an “Attitude to Animals Scale” (AAS) asking respondents to rate statements such as: “It is morally wrong to hunt wild animals just for sport,” and “The use of animals in rodeos and circuses is cruel.” The researchers found that “even within a community (i.e., non-forensic) sample approximately 15% (n=91) of respondents could be identified as having elevated aggression levels.” Their analysis of the data showed “a clear link between attitudes towards animals and human-directed aggression within a community sample, in that those who show elevated levels of aggression tend to have negative attitudes towards animals.”
The authors stress that their findings are “not a straight forward causal link,” meaning they “can not state categorically that higher aggression levels lead to poor attitudes to animals or vice versa, and indeed the utility of such causal links is questionable.” They note, however, that “it is possible that attitudes towards animals may be of some use in predicting, and possibly remedying, human-directed aggression and abuse.” For animal advocates, employing this data is a sensitive task. On the one hand, there is a danger of depreciating the abuse of animals to be simply a warning of violence towards people; but on the other hand, advocates can show the general public that animal cruelty is part of a larger pattern of aggression, which should be seriously addressed at the earliest opportunity. In either case, the challenge for advocates is to reveal the links relating to violence in a way that promotes compassion in a holistic way.