Attitude to Animals and Empathy: Comparing Animal Protection and General Community Samples

Signal, Tania; Taylor, Nicola

doi:10.2752/175303707x207918

Cited by 91 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Taylor & Signal, 2005). Animal protection workers also reported higher humandirected empathy and more positive attitudes toward animals com pared to members of the general community (Signal & Taylor, 2007). Developmental evidence also supports the existence of shared concerns for animals and for humans.…”

Section: Crossing the Intergroup Divide: Links Between How We Treat Amentioning

confidence: 90%

Toward a psychology of human–animal relations.

Amiot¹,

Bastian²

2015

Psychological Bulletin

277

202

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Nonhuman animals are ubiquitous to human life, and permeate a diversity of social contexts by providing humans with food and clothing, serving as participants in research, improving healing, and offering entertainment, leisure, and companionship. Despite the impact that animals have on human lives and vice versa, the field of psychology has barely touched upon the topic of human-animal relations as an important domain of human activity. We review the current state of research on human-animal relations, showing how this body of work has implications for a diverse range of psychological themes including evolutionary processes, development, normative factors, gender and individual differences, health and therapy, and intergroup relations. Our aim is to highlight human-animal relations as a domain of human life that merits theoretical and empirical attention from psychology as a discipline.

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Section: Crossing the Intergroup Divide: Links Between How We Treat Amentioning

confidence: 90%

Toward a psychology of human–animal relations.

Amiot¹,

Bastian²

2015

Psychological Bulletin

277

202

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“…Other research has focused on human-animal empathy (e.g., Henry 2006;Signal and Taylor 2007;Daly and Morton 2009). Some of these studies have employed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis 1983).…”

Section: Please Scroll Down For Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison of Empathy for Humans and Empathy for Animals

2011

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Although there is a substantial body of research on inter-human empathy and inter-animal empathy, there is a dearth of research comparing humans' empathic reactions to humans and animals. To address this issue, three experiments were conducted in which participants read a scenario about a human or animal abuse victim in need of medical attention, and indicated the degree of empathy they had on an emotional response scale. In Experiment 1, women had significantly more empathy for animals than for humans, whereas men tended to express more empathy for humans than for animals. In Experiment 2, adult women expressed the same degree of empathy for a child as for a puppy. Similarly, in Experiment 3, adult men and women expressed the same degree of empathy for a baby as for a puppy. Overall, results indicated that people feel at least as much empathy for animals as for humans. We suggest that an animal target elicits a great deal of empathy partly because it is perceived as not being responsible for having caused the need situation. Future research will show whether empathy for animals translates to prosocial behavior toward them as well.

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“…Across a number of studies, Kunst and Hohle (2016) observed that empathy towards the slaughtered animal negatively predicted willingness to eat meat presented in an advertisement. Indeed, that humans show empathy towards animals is commonly observed (Signal & Taylor, 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%