I [Laura] borrowed the weights for pain conversion used by Saulius Ĺ imÄikas in his assessment of hen welfare reforms (using Welfare Footprint Project data), which equates one hour of âDisablingâ pain to 100 hours of âAnnoyingâ pain, 6.66 hours of âHurtfulâ pain, and 0.2 hours of âExcruciatingâ pain (Ĺ imÄikas, 2022). However, these conversion rates are easily manipulable if one would like to test out different weights.
In other words:
Hurtful pain is r1 = 15 (= 100â6.66) times as bad as annoying pain.
Disabling pain is r2 = 6.66 times as bad as hurtful pain.
Excruciating pain is r3 = 5 (= 1â0.2) times as bad as disabling pain.
Excruciating pain is r4 = 500 (= 100â0.2) times as bad as annoying pain.
Intuitively, I would expect (having this and this posts in mind):
r1 < r2 < r3.
r4 >> 500. Excruciating pain being 500 times as bad as annoying pain means 1 min of excruciating pain is as bad as 8 h (= 500â60) of annoying pain.
For reference, the Welfare footprint project defines excruciating pain as follows:
All conditions and events associated with extreme levels of pain that are not normally tolerated even if only for a few seconds. In humans, it would mark the threshold of pain under which many people choose to take their lives rather than endure the pain. This is the case, for example, of scalding and severe burning events. Behavioral patterns associated with experiences in this category may include loud screaming, involuntary shaking, extreme muscle tension, or extreme restlessness. Another criterion is the manifestation of behaviors that individuals would strongly refrain from displaying under normal circumstances, as they threaten body integrity (e.g. running into hazardous areas or exposing oneself to sources of danger, such as predators, as a result of pain or of attempts to alleviate it). The attribution of conditions to this level must therefore be done cautiously. Concealment of pain is not possible.
Is there any research trying to figure out how to aggregate various types of pain?
Hi Vasco, thanks for the comment! I really appreciate it when people dig into the modelling choices :)
EDIT: I just saw the end of your comment. Iâm not aware of any research into the intensity of pain across types, and would be keen to hear from others who are.
I think your ordering (r1 < r2 < r3 and r4 >> 500x annoying) would be totally reasonable, and I havenât read those posts, so thanks for bringing them up! The choice to use the ratios previously used by Ĺ imÄikas was rather arbitrary and meant to be consistent with his results. I get why one might expect excruciating pain to be much worse than 500x annoying pain, and I think we do need more research on this to be able to better aggregate the duration and intensity of pain.
These are the reasons why I allow users to input their own pain weights in the model, so I definitely encourage you and others to try out using alternative weights! (here) (When you enter the weights, 1 is the benchmark for âequivalent to sufferingâ, and you might want disabling pain to be greater than 1 if down-weighting the significance of hurtful pain relative to disabling.)
Because of such methodological choices, I am more confident in the results about the animal-years improved (which look pretty good).
One thing to note would be that excruciating pain is rather rare across hensâ lifespans, and Welfare Footprint didnât find statistically significant differences between the amount of excruciating pain experienced by the average hen in conventional cages, enriched cages, and cage-free aviaries. From the âTotal Time in Painâ tab on the display at the bottom of this Welfare Footprint page, the average time a hen spends in excruciating pain in her life, by cage type, is: - Conventional: 0.05 (0.03 â 0.07) hours/âhenâ Furnished/âEnriched: 0.038 (0.018 â 0.058) hours/âhen - Cage-free: 0.04 (0.02 â 0.06) hours/âhen Due to the lack of statistically significant differences between the time spent in excruciating pain, it may be that changing the weights drastically wouldnât lead to discernible/âactionable differences in the results
However, I think that if we weighted the difference between Hurtful --> Disabling pain (r2) higher than the Annoying --> Hurtful difference we would get meaningfully different results on suffering reduction. (As we would if we chose a different benchmark category for the definition of âsufferingâ.)
Again, I encourage you and others to try this outâI hope the model is useful and accessible to lots of people. Thanks again for the comment and feedback
Nice analysis, Laura!
Here are the weights for each level of pain:
In other words:
Hurtful pain is r1 = 15 (= 100â6.66) times as bad as annoying pain.
Disabling pain is r2 = 6.66 times as bad as hurtful pain.
Excruciating pain is r3 = 5 (= 1â0.2) times as bad as disabling pain.
Excruciating pain is r4 = 500 (= 100â0.2) times as bad as annoying pain.
Intuitively, I would expect (having this and this posts in mind):
r1 < r2 < r3.
r4 >> 500. Excruciating pain being 500 times as bad as annoying pain means 1 min of excruciating pain is as bad as 8 h (= 500â60) of annoying pain.
For reference, the Welfare footprint project defines excruciating pain as follows:
Is there any research trying to figure out how to aggregate various types of pain?
FWIW, my intuition is something like this:
Hi Vasco, thanks for the comment! I really appreciate it when people dig into the modelling choices :)
EDIT: I just saw the end of your comment. Iâm not aware of any research into the intensity of pain across types, and would be keen to hear from others who are.
I think your ordering (r1 < r2 < r3 and r4 >> 500x annoying) would be totally reasonable, and I havenât read those posts, so thanks for bringing them up! The choice to use the ratios previously used by Ĺ imÄikas was rather arbitrary and meant to be consistent with his results. I get why one might expect excruciating pain to be much worse than 500x annoying pain, and I think we do need more research on this to be able to better aggregate the duration and intensity of pain.
These are the reasons why I allow users to input their own pain weights in the model, so I definitely encourage you and others to try out using alternative weights! (here) (When you enter the weights, 1 is the benchmark for âequivalent to sufferingâ, and you might want disabling pain to be greater than 1 if down-weighting the significance of hurtful pain relative to disabling.)
Because of such methodological choices, I am more confident in the results about the animal-years improved (which look pretty good).
One thing to note would be that excruciating pain is rather rare across hensâ lifespans, and Welfare Footprint didnât find statistically significant differences between the amount of excruciating pain experienced by the average hen in conventional cages, enriched cages, and cage-free aviaries.
From the âTotal Time in Painâ tab on the display at the bottom of this Welfare Footprint page, the average time a hen spends in excruciating pain in her life, by cage type, is:
- Conventional: 0.05 (0.03 â 0.07) hours/âhenâ
Furnished/âEnriched: 0.038 (0.018 â 0.058) hours/âhen
- Cage-free: 0.04 (0.02 â 0.06) hours/âhen
Due to the lack of statistically significant differences between the time spent in excruciating pain, it may be that changing the weights drastically wouldnât lead to discernible/âactionable differences in the results
However, I think that if we weighted the difference between Hurtful --> Disabling pain (r2) higher than the Annoying --> Hurtful difference we would get meaningfully different results on suffering reduction. (As we would if we chose a different benchmark category for the definition of âsufferingâ.)
Again, I encourage you and others to try this outâI hope the model is useful and accessible to lots of people. Thanks again for the comment and feedback
Hi Laura,
Thanks for taking the time to explain that! I agree with all points.