The nuts and bolts of animal emotion. (June 2020) - Kremer, L.
Highlights: This review is a synopsis of the field of animal affect. Do existing methods assess animal emotion, mood, happiness or personality? Multi-component approaches for the assessment of animal affect are promising. Low arousal positive affect in animals requires further research attention. Methods to unravel negative from positive low-arousal affect have to be identified. Abstract: The study of animal emotion, as with its human equivalent, can be confusing due to the complicated and inconsistent use of terminology, and the number of interlinked fields and topics it encompasses. With this review, we aim to provide an up-to-date and, to the best of our knowledge, complete overview of the field of animal emotion, especially intended for new-comers to the field who wish to get a grasp of this field. We start by tackling the terminology and proposing definitions of commonly used terms, and present the different frameworks used for the study of animal emotion. Here, we heavily draw from human literature, as the definitions of animal emotion are derived originally from human research. We follow-up with an overview of current methodologies for the study of animal emotion, in particular the valence dimension of emotion, and include some of the associated limitations linked to these methodologies. We end by pointing out key areas for future research.