Applying a scientific framework to another phenomenon

From a philosophy of science perspective, frameworks are general and highly flexible perspectives that typically can be applied to a broad range of phenomena. Disciplines in science (like I-O psychology) include a collection of similar and related frameworks, often called theories. Frameworks make scientists describe phenomena in a particular way and thereby direct the scientist to particular kinds of questions. Different frameworks lead to different research questions about the same phenomenon. For example, an economics framework would see a worker as an item that has costs and benefits to their employer (e.g., training costs, compensation, widgets produced) and leads inevitably to the question: does this worker produce a good return on investment?

Hernandez et al. want I-O psychology to be extended to working animals. They draw parallels between their efforts and Bergman and Jean’s (Reference Bergman and Jean2016) paper that criticizes I-O psychology’s overreliance on POSH (professional, office-based, safe from harm, in high-income countries) workers and underrepresenting employees who are earning wages, first-line, contract or gig, and low-to-medium skill. However, Hernandez et al.’s project is completely different from Bergman and Jean’s. Hernandez et al. want to extend I-O psychology to what it has not previously covered to describe phenomena in new ways. In contrast, Bergman and Jean argued that a phenomenon (non-POSH workers) have always been within I-O psychology’s framework, they were just underrepresented in empirical and theoretical work. Bergman and Jean argued that increased study of non-POSH workers would improve how much we know about them, including how they differ from POSH workers, thereby teaching us more about POSH workers too, resulting in a more robust and effective I-O psychology.

When should scientific frameworks be extended?

Hernandez et al. argue that animals are workers because they do some of the same work as humans. The idea that animals work is familiar; many breeds of dogs are literally called “working dogs” because they were bred to work as protectors, assistant hunters, or transport engines. However, the fact that animals work is not sufficient to justify Hernandez et al.’s proposal to extend I-O to animals; they also need to make the case that doing so is likely to produce useful discoveries about working animals, workers in general, and/or I-O psychology.

Hernandez et al. appear to take the position that if we can apply I-O to animals then we should. Advocates of new frameworks and of new applications of established frameworks routinely find it revelatory to describe familiar phenomena in their novel ways. However, frameworks are typically very flexible and so can be applied very broadly; frameworks are also plentiful in science, so we typically have a choice of frameworks for most phenomena we care to study. Such is the case for working animals. The question Hernandez et al.’s project faces, as it nearly always is in science, is not can I-O be applied, but what advantages does it offer over its discipline rivals (e.g., comparative psychology, biology, veterinary science, agricultural science, animal husbandry, animal training, and animal ethics, among others). The greatest opportunity for I-O to prove itself would be if established I-O results and techniques applied straightforwardly to animals to teach us about how animals work. Additional proof would come if established I-O research techniques could be applied straightforwardly to working animals to show us how to best study them. Finally, lessons from the other direction, where results from animals teach us about humans and techniques developed for the study of animals help us study humans, would also provide support for Hernandez et al.’s case.

The success of studying animals to learn about humans and vice versa is contingent on them being sufficiently similar with respect to the features being studied. Neuroscience does more work with animals than any other field of psychology not just because it is legal and considered ethical to do certain invasive studies on animals, but also because humans and animals are so similar at the neurological level that when a rodent neuron behaves in a certain way, it is likely that human neurons do too. Broadly speaking, as we “move up” from the neuron to the brain to mental experience to organism behavior to social behavior, animals and humans become more different and the likelihood of lessons from one applying to the other is reduced. Work is organism behavior and social behavior, so our expectations that animal I-O will be productive is low.

Extending a framework to new phenomena can result in new values of variables, new relationships among variables, and even new variables. The success of extending a framework to a new phenomenon depends on there being enough of the framework’s variables and relationships among them in the newly included phenomena. An extension fails if we must routinely ignore established framework relationships in favor of new ones. Such framework failure can be obscured by our general knowledge. Whenever we apply a framework to new phenomena, we use our general knowledge alongside the resources of the framework. As scientists, we should be careful to not give too much credit to a framework rather than general knowledge when we use our general knowledge to apply a framework to a new phenomenon. Were we to apply I-O to animals, our general knowledge and not the I-O framework would prevent us from drawing all sorts of conclusions about working animals that the framework implies. It is our general knowledge that prevents us from expecting a dog to fill out an application form, protect its work/life boundary, or plan on becoming CEO; these I-O issues would be ignored when studying animals because we are too knowledgeable about animals to be led to false conclusions based on the I-O psychology of humans. However, this masks the weakness of the framework’s extension.

Hernandez et al. seem to argue that the question about applying I-O to animals is do animals work and are there important things to know about their work? We disagree and instead state the question as how helpful can I-O psychology be to the study of working animals when so much of it seems irrelevant? Consider the most general hypothesis about compensation theory: Workers will do more of what they are best rewarded for doing. Of course we should not offer a dog a raise, but what if you offered them more food on days they had done a better job of shepherding? Would you expect improved performance? No, because dogs do not understand you and would be unable to put that reward and the behavior together. All that compensation theory has left to tell us about dogs is that it is a good idea for the shepherd to reward the dog after a job well done, particularly during training, but that is something that we knew anyway.

Humans and animals are too different to share the same framework

Above, we argued that animals and humans are too different for I-O to be successfully extended to working animals. Here, we highlight two key features of humans that animals do not have—self-determination and the ability to imagine possible futures—that are crucial to the underpinnings of I-O psychology. These differences follow necessarily, causally, legally, or ethically, from the fact that animals lack human general cognitive ability even though some have specific skills well beyond humans. These differences are obvious, but we think their implications are telling as to why I-O psychology is not the right discipline for understanding working animals.

Self-determination

Animal workers are owned, nearly always by whom they work for. As such, they are not in control of their own fate. They do not choose their employer, only their employer chooses them. Compensation and employment conditions are not negotiated to mutual satisfaction; they are entirely set by the employer within the limits of relevant law. In short, the relationship between employer and worker is completely different when the worker is an animal than when the worker is a human. Mostly, the employer has enormously more power (literally of life and death), but they also have some additional responsibilities, such as being responsible for the worker even when they can no longer perform their job, even if that responsibility is met with euthanization.

This ownership curtails animals’ already limited self-determination in work-related activities (i.e., when they work, who they work for, where they work, etc) and in their broader lives (e.g., if/when they reproduce). Furthermore, whether or not an animal is engaged in work tasks, they remain under the custody and control of a human who decides which of these situations they are in. For example, a dog might sniff for contraband in an airport or a horse might pull a cart, but they do not do this 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. The dog or horse needs to eat, sleep, and see a veterinarian. However, even when animals are not engaged in work tasks, they still fall under high levels of control (although low levels of burden) and are in the custody of humans.

When working animals are not engaged in work tasks, they might be engaged in what would look like leisure if they were human. However, it is predominantly the owner or their agent (who may act with considerable care and even love) rather than the animal who directs this activity. The owner decides when, where, and what the animal eats and how, when, and where the animal is bathed. In contrast, human workers have job time and non job time, and the non job time has the hallmark of freedom from the workplace. Not only is this distinction literally a subject of I-O study (work-life balance), but it is also fundamental to all of I-O psychology that there is work, which are periods when the organization has considerable control over a person, and there is non work, which are periods when the organization has very little control over a person. As a clear example of this difference, if an employer were to fence in the workplace and not allow human employees to leave, this would be a considerable moral and legal problem, but if an employer did not fence in a workplace and allowed animal laborers to leave, this would be a considerable moral and legal problem.

The ability to imagine alternative realities

Unlike humans, animals are unable to imagine alternative realities and possible futures. Whereas both animals and humans learn behavioral contingencies, humans know what might happen to them should they miss performance goals. Animals know this only in a limited sense. They might know that in addition to the positive behavioral contingencies they experience (e.g., a treat for completing a task), they might also experience negative behavioral contingencies (e.g., a slap for missing a task). Animals are unable to think about topics like paying their dues in a menial job so they can be promoted into a better job. They are unable to consider what happens when they are slow, or even that they are being slow relative to the performance expectations. They cannot consider the possibility of working for another farm. These differences are at the heart of why I-O psychology is for humans, because the tension between what is and what could be leads people to consider other jobs, decide to get trained, change attitudes, and so forth—none of which animals do.

I-O psychology is for humans, not animals

We agree with Hernandez et al. that some questions about animals working are clearly in I-O psychology’s purview because they are about the human experience of working with animals, such as stress or work-non work boundaries when working with animals. We agree with Hernandez et al. that animals work. We agree that animals are experiencing some I-O psychology themes (e.g., selection, stress) in broad strokes. Where we disagree is that animals are not experiencing them in the cognitively rich way that humans do and these differences in experiences make the application of I-O to animals untenable. Animals are not worried about their next promotion or whether they are making enough money to pay bills. Animals might be selected for a job, but they didn’t apply for it or certainly did not apply for it of their own volition.

These differences are all obvious, but they point to fundamental assumptions of I-O psychology. What would I-O psychologists ask about people if we did not assume that people have rich interior lives and that people make choices? Animals only make choices and have interior lives in a very limited sense. Without these two fundamental factors, it is hard to imagine how I-O psychology will successfully illuminate working animals. Other disciplines have produced results that I-O psychologists can interpret in I-O terms about what animal skills are needed to do a job (i.e., competency modeling) and about whether training and tasks have been successfully performed or not. But just because we can understand something in parallel terms does not mean that we have learned something new about our version of that term, or that our discipline would improve theirs. These fields would be good collaborators for I-O psychologists who want to know more about animals at work, particularly about how animals and people work together. However, I-O psychology is not the right tool to improve the lives of working animals and working animals are not the right participants to improve I-O psychology.