One of the more shocking elements of the dog attack issue is the constant observation of dog owners callously dismissing the suffering of dog attack victims or even minimizing and denying actual attacks as a relevant risk.
What’s happening here is based on several factors joining together, including proximity to the victim, brain development (theory of mind/empathy), and position of the person to the choice itself.
Based on these factors, someone either records the attack as a near miss or a remote miss.
Remote miss: when you see someone experience a bad dog attack but you aren’t impacted by it so you it makes you MORE defensive of your decision to own the same dog.
Example: a pit bull owner reads about someone being attacked by a pit. She hasn’t been attacked. She doesn’t know the person or care about them. She doesn’t relate to them. Her brain concludes that SHE evaded the consequences. So she now feels even better and doubles down on her choice.
Near miss: when you or a loved one are hurt in a dog attack but survive serious consequences so now you are even MORE opposed to unsafe dog ownership. Additionally, near misses are developed when a person has a healthy theory of mind and learns about unrelated dog attacks.
(Note: Theory of mind is a part of brain development that allows you to walk in another person’s shoes.)
Example: when you hear that your daughter and her dog were attacked. She survived, but now the threat is very real and you are even more worried about unsafe dogs.
The twist of these two psychological processes is what’s leading to the severe polarization of the topic. All the non pit people are being harmed or seeing their loved ones harmed. And they’re now clued into the topic and alarmed.
Meanwhile, all the pit owners see the headlines about attacks and feel even better about themselves. They’re lucky. It won’t happen to them. They’re better owners. They’re superior. They cheated death.
When a pit owner goes through this remote miss, it creates almost an adrenaline of sorts. An excitement and vigor. They were the same as that victim but nothing bad happened to them!
Instead of viewing the attack as a warning to change, the pit owner believes that the victim did something wrong or was unlucky and that they should absolutely continue on with the same choice.
Dehumanization of the victim, blameshifting (blaming the victim), inexperience, reduced theory of mind, and impaired empathy all play a part in this cognitive error.
The more you share dog attack facts and cases, the more you will inform those people who are within the near miss category. Or those with adequate brain function to extract the lesson.
But at the same time, the more you will fuel a bad owner to feel great about her choice and to cling to it with a sense of invincibility.
This is why we must all work together to implement common sense, universal laws in our communities to promptly address bad owners and to remove their weapons from them.
-JL #DBA Editor ©️
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