Animal Cruelty: Animal Abuse As Dirty Play

Animal Abuse as Dirty Play
Arnold Arluke
Northeastern University

Animal abuse by children is generally regarded as an impulsive psychological act without instrumental bene t. This research takes a sociological approach to the topic, exploring the deliberate harm of animals as a particular kind of unsavory or dirty play that is part of adolescent socialization. Interviews were conducted with twenty- ve college undergraduate students who admitted to abusing animals earlier in their lives. Respondents considered their prior acts a form of everyday play having serious and thrilling overtones. At a deeper level, their abuse was an extraordinary form of play in that they also were appropriating adult culture. Because their appropriations stemmed from a wider culture racked with inconsistencies about the proper treatment of animals, respondents’ presentations of self were split between those who no longer spoke of abuse as fun and admonished themselves for having done this and those who still clung to the idea that harming animals was fun and were seemingly untroubled by their former acts.

Until recently, understanding violence toward animals remained the sole province of psychologists and animal welfare advocates (e.g., Ascione and Arkow 1999). Their approach sees animal abuse as an impulsive act that re ects psychopathological problems in the offender. In one typical psychiatric study (Tapia 1971), the author suggests that children who are cruel to animals suffer from hyperactivity, short attention span, irritability, temper, destructiveness, and brain damage leading to poor impulse control. Like enuresis and re setting, animal cruelty indicates one more sign of “impulsive character development” (Felthous 1980:169). As such, the act of abuse has no social context and is likened to angry or irritable aggression that provides an emotional and perhaps rewarding release to aggressors. From a psychological perspective, animal abuse provides sought after emotion and

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