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A Comparison of Empathy
for Humans and Empathy
for Animals
Malin Angantyr, Jakob Eklund and Eric M. Hansen
Mlardalen University, Eskilstuna, Sweden

Empathy for Animals

Anthrozos DOI: 10.2752/175303711X13159027359764

ABSTRACT 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.

A number of studies have compared peoples attitudes toward animals

and animal welfare based on demographic characteristics. Pifer, Shimizu
and Pifer (1994) found that women tend to be more empathetic and

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Address for correspondence:

Jakob Eklund, HST,
Mlardalen University,
631 05 Eskilstuna, Sweden.
E-mail: jakob.eklund@mdh.se

Keywords: animals, compassion, dogs, empathy, gender differences

Moviegoers who react with indifference to depictions of violence

toward humans (e.g., a cowboy is shot) may react with pity when
the violence is directed toward animals (e.g., a cowboys horse
is shot). Perhaps this is due to people feeling more empathy for animals
than for humans. In contrast to the substantial body of research on interhuman empathy (Davis 1994; Hein and Singer 2008; Decety and Ickes
2009) and inter-animal empathy (Preston and de Waal 2002; de Waal
2008; Iacoboni 2009), research comparing humans empathic reactions
to human and animal targets is scarce.

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nurturing toward animals than are men. Serpell (2004) stated that men have an instrumental
attitude toward animals, whereas women have a more affective attitude. Women also have
more negative attitudes than men toward using animals in research (Pifer, Shimizu and Pifer
1994; Swami, Furnham and Christopher 2008).
Reid and Anderson (2009) compared various groups in terms of pet attachment. They
found that pet attachment was stronger for women than for men, and for older rather than
younger people. Further, single people in their study had the weakest pet attachment, as
opposed to retired people who had the strongest.
Other research has focused on humananimal 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). The IRI measures various aspects of empathy and is comprised of two cognitive subscales (Perspective Taking, Fantasy) and two emotional subscales
(Personal Distress, Empathic Concern). Furnham, McManus and Scott (2003) showed that
among the four subscales of the IRI, Empathic Concern and Personal Distress were significant
predictors of attitudes to animal suffering, whereas Perspective Taking and Fantasy were not.
In line with these findings, Taylor and Signal (2005) showed that Empathic Concern is a
significant predictor of attitudes toward animal welfare.
Westbury and Neumann (2008) tested empathy for humans and animals using both physiological and subjective measures. Participants attached to physiological sensors viewed film
clips depicting humans and animals (primates, quadruped mammals, birds) in distressing,
violent, and oppressive situations. After each clip, they were presented with a definition of
empathy which emphasized its cognitive aspects (capacity to objectively enter into anothers
feelings; to experience and understand anothers predicament) and indicated their degree of
empathy. The most empathy, as measured by both phasic skin conductance response and
subjective self-reports, was expressed for human targets. Across animal targets, both
measures revealed that the more phylogenetically similar the targets were to humans, the
more empathy they elicited (e.g., there was more empathy for primates than for birds).
Most researchers who have studied humananimal empathy have included cognitive aspects in their definitions of empathy. We adopted, instead, a modified version of Batsons (1987)
exclusively emotional conceptualization of empathy. He defined empathy as an other-oriented
emotional response elicited by, and congruent with, the perceived welfare of a person in need.
We adopted this definition, but extended it to include animals as well as people. Empathy, for
Batson, includes feelings of sympathy, compassion, tenderness, and the like. We chose to limit
our definition to emotional aspects because Batson and his colleagues have found strong support that empathic emotion is a source of altruistic motivation (e.g., Batson 1991). Batson, Turk,
Shaw and Klein (1995) showed that the level of empathic response can be used to infer how
much one values the welfare of someone in need. Consequently, levels of empathy elicited by
animals may reflect the value one places on animals. We leave it to philosophers of ethics to
clarify the extent to which society should consider the interests of animals compared with
humans. The focus here is instead the value people actually place on animal welfare: What level
of empathy is elicited by an animal target relative to a human target?

The Present Research

The main purpose of the present research was to investigate the extent to which animal targets
elicit empathy compared with human targets. For example, do people feel more empathy for
a cat, a dog, or a human being? On the one hand, a human target can be expected to elicit

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more empathy than an animal target because it is more similar to the human empathizer.
Indeed, similarity has been shown to be a source of empathy for animals (Westbury and
Neumann 2008), as well as an important antecedent of empathy in inter-human empathy
(Hkansson and Montgomery 2003; Eklund, Andersson-Strberg and Hansen 2009; see also
Davis 1994). On the other hand, an animal target might elicit more empathy than a human
target, as the example that opened this paper illustrates.

Experiment 1
Experiment 1 investigated whether an animal and a human target in the same need situation elicit
the same or different levels of empathy. Participants were presented with a story about a man,
woman, cat, or dog in need and were asked to indicate their level of empathy for the target.

Methods
Participants: The participants were 108 persons (53 men, 55 women). Of these, 61 were students at a university and 47 were employees in various occupational fields in South Central
Sweden. They ranged in age from 19 to 72 years (M = 32.70, SD = 13.70). All questionnaires
were returned. Participation was voluntary and no compensation was offered.
Materials and Procedure: The students completed the questionnaires in class, while the employees completed the questionnaires in their own office. The students and the employees received the same instructions. The purpose of the study was initially presented as an
examination of reactions to a story. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of four
versions of the same fictitious story about either a man, woman, cat, or dog. The story was
created for the purpose of this research. In the man-target condition, participants read:
Two policemen on patrol one evening in central Vsters discover that something is lying on the lawn in the town park. When they come closer they realize it
is an unconscious man on the ground. They call for an ambulance, which arrives
after a few minutes. The doctors establish that the man has been kicked by
someone, breaking some ribs and puncturing one lung. There are no witnesses
and the man does not remember what happened.

A Pearson correlation analysis revealed no significant correlation between empathy and age
(r = 0.03, n = 108, p = 0.79). A 2 (Participants Sex: man/woman) 4 (Target:
man/woman/dog/cat) ANOVA was conducted on the empathy index. The means for this
analysis are displayed in Table 1. This analysis revealed no significant main effect of target
(F(3, 100) = 2.04, p = 0.113, p2 = 0.058). However, there was a significant main effect of participants sex: women expressed more empathy than did men (F(1, 100) = 21.14, p < 0.01,

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The story in the woman-target condition was identical except that the target was a woman.
The cat and dog conditions were also identical except that a veterinarian was substituted for
the hospital, and no indication of the animals sex or memory of the event was given.
After reading the account, participants completed an emotional response scale1, on which
they indicated the degree to which they felt each of 16 emotions toward the victim in the account (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely). The list included six emotions used extensively in prior research (Batson et al. 2007) to assess feelings of empathy (translated into Swedish): sympathetic,
warm, softhearted, compassionate, tender, and moved (Cronbachs = 0.89).2 After completing the questionnaire, the participants were debriefed, thanked for their time and excused.

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Table 1. Means (and standard deviations) for empathy by experimental condition

and sex.
Target
Participants
Sex

Man

Woman

Dog

Cat

Total

Men

3.76 (0.33)

4.01 (0.32)

3.86 (0.32)

3.60 (0.34)

3.81 (1.30)

Women

4.15 (0.38)

4.63 (0.30)

5.63 (0.32)

5.53 (0.31)

5.05 (1.18)

Total

3.93 (1.30)

4.34 (1.41)

4.74 (1.41)

4.67 (1.32)

4.44 (1.38)

Note. The index ranged from 1 to 7, with higher scores indicating greater empathy.

Table 2. Means (and standard deviations) for empathy for human and animal target
by sex.
Target
Participants
Sex

Human

Animal

Total

Men

3.89 (1.47)

3.74 (1.11)

3.81 (1.30)

Women

4.45 (1.20)

5.58 (0.87)

5.05 (1.18)

Total

4.16 (1.36)

4.71 (1.35)

4.44 (1.38)

Note. The index ranged from 1 to 7, with higher scores indicating greater empathy.

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p2 = 0.207). This result was qualified by a significant Participants Sex Target interaction
effect (F(3, 100) = 2.84, p < 0.05, p2 = 0.079). Analyses of simple effects of participants sex were
conducted separately for each of the four levels of target. There were no effects of participants sex when the target was a man (F(1, 21) = 0.51, p = 0.484, p2 = 0.024) or a woman
(F(1, 28) = 1.50, p = 0.232, p2 = 0.051). In contrast, women expressed more empathy than did
men both when the target was a dog (F(1, 26) = 18.41, p < 0.01, p2 = 0.415) and a cat
(F(1, 25) = 31.18, p < 0.01, p2 = 0.555).
To more directly assess differences in empathy expressed for humans and animals, the
data for the man and woman targets were combined, as were the data for the cat and dog
targets. A 2 (Participants Sex: man/woman) 2 (Target: human/animal) ANOVA was conducted on the empathy index. The means for this analysis are displayed in Table 2. There was
a significant main effect of participants sex: women reported feeling more empathy for the
target than did men (F(1, 104) = 28.10, p < 0.01, p2 = 0.213). The results also showed that
more empathy was expressed for animal than for human targets (F(1, 104) = 4.66, p < 0.05,
p2 = 0.043). These effects were qualified by a significant Participants Sex Target interaction effect (F(1, 104) = 8.02, p < 0.01, p2 = 0.072). Analyses of simple effects of participants sex
were conducted separately for the two target types. When the target was human, women
tended to report feeling more empathy than did men, but this difference was not significant
(F(1, 51) = 2.29 p = 0.136, p2 = 0.043). For animal targets, women reported feeling significantly
more empathy than did men (F(1, 53) = 47.79 p < 0.01, p2 = 0.474). Further, analyses of simple effects of target type were conducted separately for men and women. Men tended to
express more empathy when the target was human than animal, but this difference was not
significant (F(1, 51) = 0.18 p = 0.67, p2 = 0.004). In contrast, women expressed significantly
more empathy for an animal than a human target (F(1, 53) = 16.27 p < 0.01, p2 = 0.235).

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In line with previous research (Eisenberg and Lennon 1983; Pifer, Shimizu and Pifer 1994)
men reported lower levels of empathy than did women, particularly when the target was an
animal. The tendency for men to express more empathy for humans than for animals is consistent with Westbury and Neumann (2008), who found that people express more empathy for
humans as opposed to animal targets. In contrast, the finding that women expressed more
empathy for animals than for people contradicts Westbury and Neumanns results. However,
since they did not report tests for sex differences it is unclear whether women in their study
expressed more empathy for the animals than did men.
The results of Experiment 1 raised the question of whether there is any target that would
evoke more empathy in women than a dog or cat. We addressed this issue in Experiment 2
by comparing a child and a puppy.

Experiment 2
Methods
Participants: The participants were 69 women, 33 students at a university and 36 employees
in various occupational fields in South Central Sweden, ranging in age from 19 to 55 years
(M = 32.14, SD = 9.60). All questionnaires were returned. No compensation was offered.
Materials and Procedure: Two versions of the story used in Experiment 1 were created: one with
a child and one with a puppy as the target. We chose a puppy instead of a dog to make it comparable in age to a child. No information about the age or sex of the child or puppy was included.
The empathy index (Cronbachs = 0.87) and procedure were the same as in Experiment 1.

Results and Discussion

A Pearson correlation analysis showed no significant correlation between empathy and age
(r = 0.03, n = 65, p = 0.83). A one-way ANOVA with target (child/puppy) as a between-subjects
factor was conducted on the empathy index. Empathy ratings tended to be slightly higher for
the puppy (M = 5.51, SD = 1.11) than for the child (M = 5.33, SD = 1.35), but this difference
was not significant (F(1, 67) = 0.38, p = 0.54, p2 = 0.006).
Experiment 2 revealed no significant difference in empathy for a child and a puppy. Generalizing from this nonsignificant result is problematic because of the relatively low power of
the study. We speculated as to possible alternative explanations for this lack of difference.
We considered that, whereas a dog is usually seen as a puppy only during its first months,
a human being can be seen as a child from infancy to the age of 18 years. There is a possibility that the results of Experiment 2 are contingent on the age of the child. For example,
would the results be different if child were exchanged for baby in the story? In Experiment
3, we tested this issue and tested whether a baby would elicit more empathy than a child
or a puppy.

Participants: The participants were 130 students (65 men and 65 women) at a university in
South Central Sweden. They ranged in age from 19 to 47 years (M = 23.81, SD = 5.40). All
questionnaires were returned. No compensation was offered.

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Materials and Procedure: The same story as in Experiments 1 and 2 was used, but this time
with a child, a baby, and a puppy as targets. Batsons empathy index was also used this time

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Experiment 3
Methods

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(Cronbachs = 0.87). Participants were also asked whether they had children or owned
dogs. The procedure was the same as in Experiments 1 and 2.

Results and Discussion

A Pearson correlation analysis showed a significant correlation between empathy and age,
such that the older participants expressed more empathy (r = 0.23, n = 128, p < 0.01). A 2
(Participants Sex: man/woman) 3 (Target: child/baby/puppy) ANOVA revealed that women
expressed significantly more empathy than did men (F(1, 124) = 14.48, p < 0.01, p2 = 0.105)
(see Table 3). There was no significant target main effect (F(2, 124) = 2.13, p = 0.12, p2 = 0.033)
and no significant Participants Sex Target interaction effect (F(2, 124) = 0.43, p = 0.65, p2 =
0.007) (see Table 3).
Table 3. Means (and standard deviations) for empathy by experimental condition
and sex.
Target
Participants
Sex

Child

Baby

Puppy

Total

Men

4.73 (1.28)

4.58 (1.31)

3.94 (1.60)

4.43 (1.43)

Women

5.37 (1.12)

5.42 (1.14)

5.10 (1.37)

5.30 (1.21)

Total

5.02 (1.24)

5.03 (1.28)

4.53 (1.58)

4.86 (1.39)

Note. The index ranged from 1 to 7, with higher scores indicating greater empathy.

To test whether being a parent was related to feeling empathy for a child or baby, the empathy ratings for child and baby were averaged together. A one-way ANOVA with parenthood
(parent/nonparent) as a between-subjects factor showed that parents reported feeling more
empathy for a child/baby (M = 5.97, SD = 0.79) than did non-parents (M = 4.84, SD = 1.25)
(F(1, 85) = 10.53, p < 0.01, p2 = 0.110). Similarly, to test whether dog ownership was related
to empathy for a puppy, a one-way ANOVA was conducted which showed that dog owners
did indeed report more empathy for a puppy (M = 5.79, SD = 0.81) than did non-owners
(M = 4.27, SD = 1.57) (F(1, 40) = 5.33, p < 0.05, p2 = 0.117).
As in previous research (Eisenberg and Lennon 1983), women expressed more empathy
generally than did men. Consistent with Daly and Mortons (2003) predictions, but contrary to
their findings, dog owners expressed more empathy for the puppy than did non-owners. In a
similar vein, parents expressed more empathy for the child/baby than did non-parents.

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General Discussion
Taken together, the results of the experiments indicate that women feel more empathy than
men, which is consistent with previous research (Eisenberg and Lennon 1983). The results indicate that women, but not men, express more empathy for animals than for human adults.
However, there was no sex difference for comparisons of empathy for puppies and children
or babies.

Animal versus Human Targets

Experiment 1 revealed relatively low levels of empathy among men for all targets. Women, in
contrast, showed more empathy for all targets, particularly animals. Westbury and Neumann
(2008) found that participants reported feeling more empathy when phylogenetic similarity to

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humans increased across animal groups. The result of Experiment 1, that animal targets elicited
more empathy in women than did human targets, is thus contrary to the effect of similarity that
would be predicted from Westbury and Neumanns study. Although similarity has been shown
to be a potent antecedent of empathy, it is not the only source. For example, Fidler, Coleman
and Roberts (2000) found that more people would try to save the life of a blackbird than the
life of a mouse, despite the fact that mice are more similar to humans, which they interpreted
as an indication that there was more empathy for the bird than for the mouse. Other possible
sources of empathy are responsibility for, and control over, ones suffering (Goetz, Keltner and
Simon-Thomas 2010). Targets with little or no control over the cause of their suffering elicit
more empathy than those with greater control, which may be related to the tendency to perceive the world as just (Lerner and Miller 1978) and to blame victims for their suffering (JanoffBulman, Timko and Carli). This may account for the finding that women showed more empathy
for animals and children than for human adults, who may be perceived as having more
responsibility or control for their victimization in the fictionalized accounts used in this study.
In previous research (Serpell 2004; Swami, Furnham and Christopher 2008), as well as in
Experiments 1 and 3, women reported feeling more empathy for animals than did men. In the
same vein, previous research has also noted that women have more affective attitudes toward animals (Pifer, Shimizu and Pifer 1994; Serpell 2004) and have stronger bonds with animals than men do (Reid and Andersson 2009).
Experiment 2 did not reveal any significant difference between empathy for a child and a
puppy. Although no statistical analyses were conducted across the experiments, mean ratings
of empathy for a child in Experiment 2 tended to be higher than those for a man and a woman
in Experiment 1, but not higher for any of the animal targets in Experiments 1 and 2. In Experiment 3, a child, a baby and a puppy elicited approximately the same levels of empathy.
How can we explain this pattern of results? There are likely a number of factors determining
the levels of empathy elicited by these different targets. Among these, similarity might increase
empathy for human targets and lack of responsibility might increase the levels of empathy for
both the human and animal targets.
In Experiment 3, parents had more empathy for the child and the baby than did non-parents, and dog owners had more empathy for the puppy than did non-owners. This is in line
with research showing effects of owning a dog on childrens empathy (Daly and Morton 2003;
2006). More generally, this finding is also consistent with research in non-animal contexts
showing effects of previous similar experience on empathy (Eklund, Andersson-Strberg and
Hansen 2009).

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Although we find the present results inspiring, the experiments had a number of limitations. We
used only fictive accounts of one type of need situation with only a cat or dog as animal targets. Further, we used only self-reports of empathy. Thus, we encourage future research to test
these processes in real-life settings, with other need situations, other animal targets, and with
more objective measures. Further, as noted above (Goetz, Keltner and Simon-Thomas 2010),
one possible explanation for the greater degree of empathy for animals and children may be
due to the perception that they are less responsible for their suffering than are adults. Thus,
future research might assess the degree to which the victim is perceived as being responsible for his or her suffering, or directly manipulate the degree to which the victim is responsible.
Finally, according to Batson (1991), empathic concern leads to prosocial behavior toward

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fellow humans. Future research on human-animal empathy will show whether empathy for
animals translates to prosocial behavior toward them as well.

Acknowledgements
Appreciation goes to Anna-Christina Blomkvist and Kerstin Isaksson for their comments on
parts of the manuscript.

Notes
1. A copy of this scale is available from the corresponding author upon request.
2. This questionnaire was back-translated using the method described by Moghaddam, Taylor and Wright
(1993).

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