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Do animals think and feel? How this question is answered has a direct bearing on how empathetically and considerately people treat animals. An international team led by researchers in Leipzig has now found that people from different cultural contexts are surprisingly consistent in their views: while many adults and children assume that animals are generally capable of thinking and feeling, they do not attribute human-like thoughts to them.
Much of the existing psychological research on human perceptions of animals has focused on people from Western societies. For their large-scale study, the scientists from the “Children and Nature” research group at Leipzig University’s LeipzigLab and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) adopted a cross-cultural approach, involving people of different ages from a wide range of social and socio-cultural contexts. For the study, they surveyed more than 1,000 children aged 4 to 17 and almost 200 adults from 33 communities in 15 countries, asking them to what extent they believed animals could feel and think.
Belief in the uniqueness of human thinking
The largely similar assessments came as a surprise to the researchers, explains Professor Katja Liebal of Leipzig University, who led the study together with first author Karri Neldner and Professor Daniel Haun of MPI-EVA. Most respondents were convinced that animals are generally capable of thoughts and feelings, but that their thinking fundamentally differs from human thinking. Views were less uniform when it came to whether animals can have human-like emotions.
Even though the sample size is not sufficient to generalise the findings to all people, the researchers see the data as pointing to a fundamental human belief: what people primarily regard as separating them from other animals is thinking. Humans see themselves as mentally unique.
Implications for how people treat animals
“The belief in the uniqueness of human thinking emerges early in life and remains stable across the entire lifespan,” explains Neldner. This assessment has important implications for how other living beings are treated: “The mental capacities attributed to animals also determine their moral status. In this way, people can justify using animals for food, medicine or entertainment.”
At the same time, animal species perceived as sentient or human-like receive disproportionately high levels of protection, donations and political support. “This is particularly problematic in the context of species extinction and biodiversity loss: insects, which are heavily affected by these developments, receive far less attention and interest than mammals, even though mammals make up only a fraction of overall biodiversity,” says Liebal.
In addition, the researchers found that the children and adolescents surveyed in urban communities were more likely to attribute thoughts and feelings to animals than their peers in rural areas. Possible reasons include the fact that children in cities are more frequently exposed to human-like representations of animals, or that children in rural areas more often encounter animals that are dangerous, harmful or kept as livestock, which may foster emotional distance.
The research team chose an unusual survey method for their study: unlike in many psychological studies, the interviews were not conducted by researchers, but by people from the respective cultural contexts and communities. These interviewers had previously been trained in interview techniques and evaluation. The interviews were subsequently translated, transcribed and analysed by the researchers using both qualitative and quantitative methods. “Even though the study process was far less controlled than it would have been if we had invited participants into a laboratory, we are convinced that the data obtained in this way are far more valuable, as they were generated within the respective cultural contexts,” says Liebal.
Background
From 2020 to 2023, the LeipzigLab research group “Children and Nature” investigated the attitudes of children and adolescents towards animals and the development of these attitudes in different socio-cultural contexts. The group comprised researchers from behavioural biology as well as developmental and cross-cultural psychology at Leipzig University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, along with additional partners. The researchers involved are currently analysing the data and preparing further publications.
Professor Katja Liebal
Leipzig University
Tel.: 0341 97-36879
katja.liebal@uni-leipzig.de
Professor Daniel Haun
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
haun@eva.mpg.de
Karri Neldner
University of Western Australia
karri.neldner@uwa.edu.au
Original title of the publication in the Journal of Environmental Psychology:
“Children and adults across 15 countries believe in human uniqueness of mind: a cross-cultural investigation of cross-species mind perception”, doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102861 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494425003445
Among other things, the researchers surveyed more than 1,000 children on the extent to which they be ...
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Among other things, the researchers surveyed more than 1,000 children on the extent to which they be ...
Copyright: Colourbox
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