Empathic choices for animals versus humans: the role of choice context and perceived cost

ABSTRACT

People appear to empathize with cases of animal suffering yet to disregard such suffering when it conflicts with human needs. In three studies, we used an empathy regulation measure – the empathy selection task – to test whether people choose or avoid sharing in experiences of animals versus humans. In Study 1, when choosing between sharing experiences of animals or humans, participants preferred humans and rated sharing animal (versus human) experiences as more cognitively costly. In Studies 2a-2b, the choice to share experiences or be objective was done without a forced choice between animals and humans. When empathy opportunities for humans and animals were not contrasted against each other, participants avoided experience sharing for humans but not for animals. Manipulations of prosocial cost in these studies did not consistently moderate choice differences. Freeing people from contexts that pit empathy for animals against empathy for humans may diminish motivated disregard of animals’ experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Empathy
• prosocial behavior
• effort
• emotion regulation
• moral judgment
• animals

Acknowledgments

The current research was supported by a grant from the UCLA Animal Law program and funding support through the Rock Ethics Institute. The first author is also supported by grant #61150 from the John Templeton Foundation and has presented some of this work in a colloquium at Penn State. The fifth author is also supported by funding from USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Federal Appropriations (under Project PEN04437 and Accession #1012188). We thank Julian A. Scheffer for feedback on survey design, Cassie Sieradzky for helping with programming, Marco Ciappetta for assistance in coding, India Oates for assistance with stimuli, and Nicholas Buentello, Natalia Reed, and Alyssa Sweeney for assistance in compiling references.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/n75h8/?view_only=1f2f1b4c15e842729abf18b64abf29f4.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/n75h8/?view_only=1f2f1b4c15e842729abf18b64abf29f4.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

1. We estimated Hedges’ g to assist in providing measure of cumulative effect size (Borenstein et al., 2009, 2013; Lakens, 2013).

2. We noted the programming error that costs were only measured for animals for one order-counterbalanced condition. Cognitive costs after the human block were assessed for both counterbalanced conditions. The statistics for human choice-cost correlations in main text refer to the limited sample of participants who had costs for both species. Results for human cost-choice correlations are similar in the full sample of participants (N = 196): choosing empathy in the human block correlated negatively with effort, r = −.34, 95% CI [−.46, −.21], aversion, r = −.40, 95% CI [−.51, −.28], and positively with efficacy, r = .49, 95% CI [.37, .59], p’s < .001.

3. The stimuli numbers for the human stimuli are located in the Supplemental Material, and the authors will share the full koala stimuli for research purposes upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation [61150]; UCLA Animal Law and Policy Program; Rock Ethics Institute; USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Federal Appropriations [PEN04437].

Notes on contributors

C. Daryl Cameron

C. Daryl Cameron is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute at The Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on motivational influences on empathy and compassion, as well as the mechanisms underpinning moral decision-making.

Michael L. Lengieza

Michael L. Lengieza is a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on nature and self-expansion: How nature becomes included in the self, how being in nature might result in self-expansion, and how we can expand the self to include the concerns of others.

Eliana Hadjiandreou

Eliana Hadjiandreou is a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research examines third-party perceptions of empathy and moral expansiveness, particularly as they relate to stigmatized or competitive outgroups.

Janet K. Swim

Janet K. Swim is a Professor of Psychology at The Pennsylvania State University. She studies emotions and beliefs about nature and animals that influence connection to nature, pro-environmental actions, and policy support.

Robert M. Chiles

Robert M. Chiles is an Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education, the Department of Food Science, and the Rock Ethics Institute at The Pennsylvania State University. His scholarship involves three related themes: (a) how food culture, ethical beliefs, and political-economic institutions are intertwined, (b) the methods and social processes by which agricultural science is performed, and (c) the development of novel, interdisciplinary, and impactful solutions to food system challenges and controversies.