Animal Emotions

This culture is too preoccupied with being politically correct. Way too sensitive. Bring on the chimps, Psychology Today!

It might be easy to be flippant or dismissive of Dr. Bekoff's concerns if not for the fact that chimpanzees are in danger of extinction and we have robust evidence that how they are portrayed in the media affects the public's perception of them and their protection. That is serious business! It is not political correctness. We are losing our closest relative at an alarming rate and we should be doing all we can to deal with that problem.

I am very surprised that Psychology Today - a magazine that touts itself as a scientific-minded vehicle for information - would stoop to such a demeaning portrayal of chimpanzees. The editors of Psychology Today need to do their own homework and learn about the literature on the effects of portraying other animals in different lights. Otherwise their credibility will be severely diminished.

Lori Marino, PhD
Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology
Emory University

I think it's an outrage and that you show no respect at all to picture dressed up primates. In a magazine like yours, of all places! With all your assembled intelligence: Shame on you...

Apart from giving the wrong idea about these precious, endangered animals, it may also encourage people to want to have a primate as a pet. Considering the fact that one can legally buy primates - and other wild animals - in the USA, I put huge question marks if the USA has the right to call itself civilized.
Ignorant: yes. But that can be helped by raising awareness.

Please show a picture of a chimpanzee in the wild in your next magazine with an educational article on "Why do people tend to humanize primates?" Maybe mrs. Marino is willing to be the author.

Petra Post,
primate protector trying to raise awareness,
Holland.

Well said, Marc. It is a violation of their rights that human animals choose the forced participation of other animals. It is not whether they are becoming extinct or whether they are being abused, it is that they are used at all. It reinforces the animals as commodities paradigm.

Thank you, Marc, for raising objections to these images. Yes, they catch the eye (which is the intention, no doubt). But portraying chimps as furry little humans certainly fosters the perspective that they ARE furry little humans, hence engaging and appropriate pets. This is of course a juvenile chimp, which most readers won't appreciate, nor will they know how strong, potentially dangerous, and mistreated they are by people who make them "living dolls" until they grow up and get frustrated and dangerous. I believe it should be illegal to keep wild animals in captivity without serious regulation and serious education of the keepers. It is certainly immoral, in my view, and cruel.

It is akin to showing how much FUN it can be to have a semiautomatic weapon and shoot it at baddies or anybody who pisses you off in the slightest -- no, wait, that is already done in the media, constantly. And it certainly does not encourage people to copy that behavior, does it? I mean, are there drive by shootings carried out by, say, annoyed teenagers?

Objecting to these portrayals of chimps is not a matter of political correctness, it is a matter of trying not to give false impressions, to avoid encouraging people to do wrong, and to prevent encouraging people to do something very dangerous.

Everyone has focused on "abuse of chimps."

Suppose instead of a bride holding the hand of or kissing a chimp, it was a groom in the illustration for "Are you with the right mate?"

What would most of the responses focus on?

I suppose, Male Matters, you think that if the human on the cover were a groom that I would object to the tacit insult to women
("does your wife look like a chimpanzee?"). I doubt that would be my response. It took me quite a while to figure out what your point might be, in fact.

My objection to the image is NOT based on the idea that the chimp would sexually assault the bride or is an insulting portrayal of a man. My objection is based on the point that this image contributes to the fundamental misunderstanding of a perfectly good and important species.

Just sayin'....

Are you kidding me? When Obama was portrayed as a monkey on signs at Tea Party meetings, no one complained about showing monkeys in clothes as insensitive to monkeys. Everyone immediately saw this as racism, showing a black man as a monkey. I'm sure that was the purpose of the sign-maker as well.

So Psych Today is obviously being sexist as hell by portraying men as monkeys. I can't believe that isn't the first and only interpretation. Where are we in this society where people cannot see that? We obviously do not think much of men. We seem more concerned for women who only have monkeys to choose from for mates. Are you kidding me?

For starters, chimpanzees are not monkeys but apes. For those who know much about these animals, the difference between monkeys and apes is large.

Zoology aside, I am aware that there is an old and insidious link between Africans or other people of color and apes that implies people of color are not actually human. Hence I do find it offensive that Obama was portrayed as an ape. I guess since I am not male, I am less alert to the issue that men are also linked unfavorably with apes. I took the social meaning of the chimp in clothes to be that the chimp was OBVIOUSLY an unsuitable mate for a woman, any woman. I didn't think the article was particularly aimed at telling women how to get rid of the inappropriate men they were with rather than vice versa.

Because I see chimpanzees in particular being more and more often mistreated in captivity, and it makes me more and more uneasy, I picked up on that interpretation of the image more than I did on the men-as-apes interpretation. Perhaps if the animal had been a pig -- as in "sexist pig" -- I would have gotten the anti-male message as well.

No, I'm not kidding you. I am simply reacting from my personal perspective.

Thanks for this wonderful article highlighting the ethical problems associated with the use of chimpanzees in entertainment and advertising. Hopefully Psychology Today will agree never to feature live great apes in the publication again.