Trophy Hunting

A Psychological Perspective

Geoffrey Beattie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000693164
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book explores the psychology of trophy hunting from a critical perspective and considers the reasons why some people engage in the controversial activity of killing often endangered animals for sport.

Recent highly charged debate, reaching a peak with the killing of Cecil the lion in 2015, has brought trophy hunting under unprecedented public scrutiny, and yet the psychology of trophy hunting crucially remains under-explored. Considering all related issues from the evolutionary perspective and 'inclusive fitness', to personality and individual factors like narcissism, empathy, and the Duchenne smiles of hunters posing with their prey, Professor Beattie makes connections between a variety of indicators of prestige and dominance, showing how trophy hunting is inherently linked to a desire for status. He argues that we need to identify, analyse and deconstruct the factors that hold the behaviour of trophy hunting in place if we are to understand why it continues, and indeed why it flourishes, in an age of collapsing ecosystems and dwindling species populations.

The first book of its kind to examine current research critically to determine whether there really is an evolutionary argument for trophy hunting, and what range of motivations and personality traits may be linked to this activity. This is essential reading for students and academics in psychology, geography, business, environmental studies, animal welfare as well as policy makers and charities in these and related areas. It is of major relevance for anyone who cares about the future of our planet and the species that inhabit it.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Ethics, emotions, and behaviours

President Theodore Roosevelt and his prey.

In a civilized and cultivated country wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen. The excellent people who protest against all hunting, and consider sportsmen as enemies of wild life, are ignorant of the fact that in reality the genuine sportsman is by all odds the most important factor in keeping the larger and more valuable wild creatures from total extermination.

Theodore Roosevelt

26th President of the United States

1901−1909

President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt was an important advocate of trophy hunting. In his book African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist, Roosevelt described his hunting adventures in East Africa, reporting a kill tally of 512 for himself and his son Kermit. The tally is described in great detail, it included 17 lions (9 shot by Teddy; 8 shot by Kermit), 11 elephants (8 by Teddy; 3 by Kermit) 8 hippopotami (7 by Teddy; 1 by Kermit) and 9 giraffes (7 by Teddy; 2 by Kermit). It seems that Kermit, however, had more luck with the faster animals—the leopards and the cheetahs. Kermit bagged 3 leopards and 7 cheetahs; Teddy didn’t bag any.

This safari was described as a ‘conservation mission’ although Roosevelt expressed considerable pride in his and his son’s hunting ability. They kept about a dozen trophies for themselves and donated the rest to the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum, with the aim ‘to promote the natural world and science’. A former President of the United States participating in and endorsing trophy hunting lent and continues to lend considerable respectability to the activity, especially with the emphasis on ‘conservation’. Roosevelt did, however, stress throughout the personal thrill of hunting big game in the strongest and most visceral of terms: ‘it made our veins thrill’, he wrote. The fundamental conflict between conservation and the joy of killing is reflected throughout his discourse.

There has been a great deal of highly charged emotional debate and indeed moral outrage about trophy hunting, especially over the past few years (see, for example, Nelson, Bruskotter, Vucetich and Chapron 2016). The act of paying large sums of money to travel to Africa or similar locations to kill certain trophy species, particularly the Big Five—lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo and leopard—for sport, and then to display the carcasses in images which include the (almost invariably smiling) hunter and the means of killing (rifle or crossbow) evokes strong and very powerful emotions.

It evokes strong emotions in those who oppose trophy hunting, who see it as cold-blooded, premeditated murder of majestic animals (analogous, in many people’s minds to serial killing given that the act is often repeated, finances allowing) with devastating implications for the conservation of certain species of animal, particularly rare species—rarity, of course, being one of the most significant factors that influences the value of the trophy animal alongside the ‘charisma’ of the species (Johnson et al. 2010).

Trophy hunting also elicits strong emotions in those who support it, who view it as an accomplishment of the highest order, the ultimate test of human skill and endurance in a battle with nature, a natural act, part of the evolutionary cycle, with positive implications (they argue—many say contentiously) for conservation, in terms of the fees intended to trickle down into the local economies to support conservation work.

However, a core issue for both positions is what might be called ‘the psychology of trophy hunting’. Why do men and women want to pursue this activity in the first place? What drives them? Can we understand the desire or the need to engage in trophy hunting in psychological terms? Is this a primary or a secondary consideration? Does the underlying psychology have implications for all the economic and ethical arguments that surround trophy hunting? Are these economic and ethical arguments nothing more than justifications and rationalisations for forms of behaviour that are primitive and unknown? Or does the hunting of wild animals follow a strict moral and ethical code that has very positive effects for the preservation of wildlife, as Teddy Roosevelt suggested, if we can rid ourselves of the overpowering emotions (disgust, sadness, anger, shame, guilt, perhaps even fear) that may cloud our vision?

These psychological considerations, I will suggest, are central to the debate on trophy hunting, including the ethical discourse around it. They are always present in one form or another, sometimes explicitly but often insidiously and implicitly.

It is worth noting at the outset that there are strong ethical arguments firmly presented by both sides of the trophy hunting divide. Trophy hunters argue primarily about the ‘naturalness’ of hunting for mankind, fixed in time and place, it would seem, by certain evolutionary constraints. In the words of Nils Peterson (2004) ‘According to this concept, humans are predators and hunting is the only way for them to enter nature as a participant rather than a spectator….Thus, hunting is “right” because it is a natural human role’ (Peterson 2004: 311). It is more than natural, according to some who employ this ethical framework; it also represents ‘an honest relationship with nature while most others are deceptive.’

Of course, the argument about naturalness only takes us so far. Many other features of hunter−gatherer societies are also ‘natural’ in that they are common and regular. Such features represent the established order: the way things are. Consider, for example, the regular and recurring practices of male patriarchy and the subjugation of women that over time appear ‘natural’. Critics would say that this makes the naturalness argument somewhat less appealing.

Michael Nelson from Oregon State University and his colleagues (2016) discussed some of the other ethical issues involved in trophy hunting and provided a critical appraisal of each of the standard arguments used. They began by rightly recognising the importance of Aldo Leopold (1933) for establishing how we think and reason in ethical terms about wildlife management. Leopold wrote about ‘the art of making land produce sustained annual crops of wild game for recreational use.’ Nelson and his colleagues argued that this is still the dominant perspective for viewing wildlife and justifying many forms of hunting, including trophy hunting. Wild animals should be considered as crops to be cultivated and harvested for human recreational use. ‘Harvested’ is a very frequent and recurrent trope used throughout the discourse of trophy hunters, as we shall see. Nelson and colleagues also pointed out that the arguments and debates about trophy hunting (often about its appropriateness for animal conservation) often ‘skirt [rather than strictly address] the broader ethical question sitting at the heart of the controversy. This question, put simply, is: what constitutes a good reason to kill an animal?’ (Nelson et al. 2016: 303). Trophy hunters, the researchers argue, most commonly use the ethical theory of consequentialism to justify their actions. This theory holds that the consequence of one’s action or practice is the sole basis for judging whether the action is right or wrong (reflected in that well-worn aphorism that the ends justify the means).

However, they point out the shortcomings of this argument. Firstly, they remind us that in many situations, the ends clearly do not justify the means. They use the example of human sex trafficking. They write ‘The revenue that could be generated [for philanthropic purposes from such an activity] is not sufficient to override the wrong that is done when we condone human trafficking’ (Nelson et al. 2016: 303). The second major shortcoming of consequentialism, they argue, is its tendency to downplay or ignore the importance of motivation when attempting to assess the rightness or wrongness of the action in question (as if motivation is irrelevant to ends-and-means arguments).

Motivation is a critical component in many ethical judgments. For example, murder and manslaughter may both be very wrong, but how wrong depends upon judgments about motivation and, of course, judgments about the intentionality of the act (which is intimately bound up with motivation). The motivation to kill an animal like Cecil just to acquire a trophy (with a series of concomitant judgments about the psychological characteristics of someone who would need that kind of trophy to satisfy his or her psychological needs in this way), rather than engaging in the killing to provide a source of food or as a defensive or protective act, would lead to a much more severe (negative) ethical judgment than the same act perpetrated with a different set of underlying motivations. Critics of trophy hunting would (and do) argue that hunting is immoral, not just because it requires intentionally inflicting harm on innocent creatures with morally questionable motivations, but also because of what it tells us about the individuals involved.

In a piece in The Conversation, Duclos (2017) calls this ‘the objection from character’ and further states that ‘This argument holds that an act is contemptible not only because of the harm it produces, but because of what it reveals about the actor. Many observers find the derivation of pleasure from hunting to be morally repugnant.’ Our inferences about the characteristics of those involved may well influence our ethical decisions in this domain. Thus, considerations about underlying psychological motivation and psychological perceptions of character would seem to be important aspects of the ethical decision-making process when it comes to trophy hunting. Such psychological considerations are not separate from some sort of abstract, context-free ethical framework, which avoids any analysis of the human element in the controversy.

There is, however, another very important psychological aspect to ethical judgments about trophy hunting, in that it can be highly emotional. Indeed, evidence of strong emotions in the discourse of those who oppose trophy hunting often attracts considerable criticism from those who support it. They argue that opponents of trophy hunting have their judgment clouded (or narrowed or over-ridden) by emotion. They go on to say that, on the one hand, we have ‘rational’ arguments about wildlife management, conservation and the ‘harvesting of certain animals, and on the other a somewhat irrational outpouring of emotion, which just serves to confuse the matter.

Nelson for one does not accept this: he argues based on research in decision-making that emotion may not just be understandable in this and related contexts, but adaptive as well—a guide to rational decision-making rather than a hindrance or a substitute (Bechara, Tranel and Damasio 2000; Bechara 2004; Damasio 1994). Indeed, a large body of research in neuroscience on the relationship between emotion and thinking demonstrates that one system, the emotion-based, unconscious automatic system (called System 1 by the Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, 2011) often precedes and directs the other slower, more reflective and conscious system (called System 2 by Kahneman).

The research of Antonio Damasio and his colleagues (Damasio 1994; Bechara et al. 2000) has shown that the emotion-based system focuses attention, has a major effect on what we remember and is more closely linked to behaviour in many situations than are conscious cognitions (see also Beattie and McGuire 2015; Walsh and Gentile 2007). Furthermore, it appears that the emotional system precedes activation of any conceptual or reasoning system.

Damasio demonstrated this with a very simple gambling experiment. Sitting in front of the experimental participants are four decks of cards, in their hands they have $2000 to gamble with. Their task is to turn over one card at a time to win the maximum amount of money; with each card the player either wins or loses some money. In the case of two of the decks, the rewards are great ($100) but so too are the penalties. A participant playing either of these two decks for any period of time will end up losing money. On the other hand, if he or she concentrates on selecting cards from the other two decks, the rewards are smaller ($50) but the penalties are also smaller, so the player ends up winning money.

What Damasio found with people playing this game was that after encountering a few losses normal participants generated skin conductance responses (signs of autonomic arousal) before selecting a card from the ‘bad deck’ and they also started to avoid the decks associated with bad losses. In other words, they showed distinct emotional responses to the bad decks even before they had a conceptual understanding of the nature of the decks and long before they could explain what was going on in this experiment. It seems that they started to avoid the bad decks based on their emotional responses.

Damasio also found that patients with damage to an area of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex failed to generate skin conductance responses before selecting cards from the bad deck and also did not avoid the decks with large losses. Patients with damage to this part of the brain could not generate the anticipatory skin conductance responses and could not avoid the bad decks even though they conceptually understood the differences in the decks before them. ‘The patients failed to act according to their correct conceptual knowledge’ according to Bechara et al. (1997: 1294). In other words, Damasio and his colleagues demonstrated that ‘in normal individuals, non-conscious biases guide behaviour before conscious knowledge does. Without the help of such biases, overt knowledge may be insufficient to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction: Ethics, emotions, and behaviours
• 2. An evolutionary perspective
• 3. Psychological motivations: Expressed and hidden
• 4. Justifying the unjustifiable?
• 5. Why trophy hunters smile with such relish
• 6. The personality of the trophy hunter
• 7. Concluding remarks
• References
• Index