Positive welfare research in pigs has identified indicators of good emotional states including play behaviour, exploratory activity, and optimistic cognitive bias that help assess true welfare quality.
The positive welfare paradigm represents a shift from avoiding suffering toward promoting positive experiences — an aspiration that requires different measurement tools. For pigs, positive welfare indicators include play behaviour frequency, exploratory engagement with enrichment materials, optimistic performance in cognitive bias tests, and affiliative social interactions. These indicators allow welfare assessors to distinguish between the absence of negative states and the presence of positive ones — a distinction that matters morally, as a life free from suffering but empty of positive experience is not the same as a life with both. Farms that meet positive welfare indicators are demonstrably better environments for their animals.