Personality Differences between Pro- and Antivivisectionists

Abstract

We examined the possibility that opinions on the animal rights debate reflect differences in personality. Our survey of 1055 college students compared scores on the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory and other personality measures with scores on the Animal Research Survey. We found people supportive of animal experimentation more likely to be male, masculine, conservative and less empathic than those opposed to it. Animal rights advocates were more likely to support vegetarianism and to be more ecologically concerned. They also indicated less faith in science. Students likely to encounter animal experimentation in their studies (psychology, biology majors) tended to oppose animal experimentation more than others. Intuitive and feeling types were more opposed to animal experimentation than were sensate and thinking types. Extraverted-sensate and extraverted-thinking types were more likely to favor animal experimentation than were extraverted-intuitive and extraverted-feeling types. Implications of these results are discussed.

A survey of attitudes of Turkish veterinary students and educators about animal use in research

“…The gender is the primary reason to show a definite trend in most of the studies aiming to determine an a�itude towards the animal rights and AUR, and females represent a more zoo-centric trend than males in these ma�ers (Gallup and Beckstead, 1988;Herzog et al, 1991;Driscoll, 1992;Broida et al, 1993;Furnham and Heyes, 1993;Eldridge and Gluck, 1996;Pifer, 1996;Ozen et al, 2004). The results of this study also proved that the female participants were closer to the zoo-centric line than males in both the groups of the educators and the students.…”

Empathy and attitudes to animals

“…Factors known to affect attitudes towards animals include personality (Broida et al 1993;Mathews and Herzog 1997), gender and sex role orientation (Herzog, Betchart and Pittman 1991;Hills 1993), religious and/or political stance (Bowd and Bowd 1989;Kimball 1989), ethical ideology (Galvin and Herzog 1992), companion animal ownership (Paul and Serpell 1993), and other demographic variables such as age and race (Kellert 1988). For example, previous research has suggested that the presence of a companion animal during childhood may lead to an increased sensitivity to the feelings and attitudes of others (Serpell 1996).…”

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

“…However, they reported that the correlations between personality and attitudes to animals were generally low and non-significant. Broida et al (1993) investigated the influence that the personality differences of approximately 1000 college students had on their attitudes towards vivisection. They reported that those who supported animal rights were more likely to oppose the use of animals in research and those who were not opposed to vivisection tended to be less empathic.…”

“…That is, a general community sample was contrasted with a sample drawn specifically from the animal protection community. It was expected that those in the animal protection sample should have elevated attitudes towards the treatment of animals, and thus that they should have attendant elevated levels of human-directed empathy (Broida et al 1993). It was also expected that the relationship between these would be stronger than seen in the general community sample.…”