Compassion is a topic of growing relevance to animal care professionals. Linnehan et al. (2023) explain that compassionate practitioners mitigate distress. However, being private events, animal emotions are difficult to evaluate directly. Goldiamond (1974) identified emotions as private outcomes of different contingencies. This means that when contingencies are altered, emotions can be changed. This can guide interventions to address contingencies to transform overt emotional behavior and the associated covert private emotions. This presentation will provide examples of how this powerful strategy can be used to measure behavioral responses in animal healthcare and training programs, providing a more objective evaluation of emotions,
which can result in improved welfare.