Physical Cruelty of Companion Animals 47 Wright and Hensley 2003), another finds no association (Arluke et al 1999; Climent and Ervin 1972; Miller and Knutson 1997; Goodney Lea 2007) Moreover, engaging in legal, socially acceptable forms of harm to animals, as in hunting and farming, does not increase one’s propensity for violence (Flynn 2002; Richards et al 2013) Research reporting high rates of violent crime in communities surrounding slaughterhouses suggests an exception (Fitzgerald et al 2009), but none has studied workers directly For centuries, there has been a perception that those who regularly kill animals are psychologically compromised, as exemplified by the exclusion of butchers from juries during the Middle Ages because they were assumed to lack compassion (Pattenden 1999) And although some studies claim to find a link between witnessing animal abuse and other forms of violence (Baldry 2005; Gullone and Robertson 2008; Henry 2004b; Tallichet and Hensley 2005; Thompson and Gullone 2006), others suggest that witnessing harm to animals can promote a sense of compassion (Arluke 2003; Atwood-Harvey 2007; Lewis 2007; Pallotta 2008) The idea that cruelty to animals is necessarily ‘indicative of something pathological and more sinister’ (Piper 2003, p 163) stems largely from psychologists’ reliance on retrospective accounts of convicted criminals or violent psychiatric patients In contrast, by comparing animal abusers with non-abusers, Arluke et al (1999) found that, although abusers were more likely than nonabusers to have violent criminal records, they were also more likely to engage in other antisocial behaviour, including non-violent offenses Thus, animal cruelty may correlate with antisocial behaviour generally, in addition to human violence This supports a ‘generalised deviance’ hypothesis, in which cruelty to animals represents one manifestation of a tendency towards antisocial behaviour, rather than a step towards criminal violence (see also Goodney Lea 2007) Some research even suggests that animal abusers desist, rather than advancing to, later violence or other forms of antisocial behaviour For instance, in a survey of college students, Arluke (2002) found that 25 % admitted to having harmed or killed companion and other animals as children or adolescents (none were arrested for their acts) Arluke then interviewed a subset of these students to learn what significance their acts held for them and what their behaviour meant in the context of adolescent socialisation, recognising the subjectivity of these accounts, given the passage of time and the need to rationalise prior behaviour Many students recalled their acts as just something kids did when they had nothing else to Some viewed their abuse as no different from other forms of play, alongside video games or skateboarding Importantly, they recalled no feelings of violence or anger directing their acts, and they had not set out to harm or to kill animals but to toy with them