Dogs take the lead in earning empathy

UNITED STATES: The American researchers behind a recent study into human-dog empathy have found that people are consistently more distressed by reports of dogs being beaten up than they are by the same reports about adult humans.

For their research, published in the journal Society & Animals, they presented 240 students with a fake newspaper clipping. It described police reports about an attack ‘‘with a baseball bat by an unknown assailant’’.

The article continued: ‘‘Arriving on the scene a few minutes after the attack, a police officer found the victim with one broken leg, multiple lacerations, and unconscious.’’

The twist was that the victim changed. It was either a 1-year-old infant, a 30-year-old adult, a puppy, or a 6-year-old adult dog.

The scientists, from Northeastern University, Boston, then asked the students to describe their emotions, using a standard set of questions designed to produce a measure of empathy.

They found that those who had read the report about an attack on a child, dog or puppy all registered similar levels of empathy. When it was a human adult, however, the results were different.

‘‘Respondents were significantly less distressed when adult humans were victimised, in comparison with human babies, puppies and adult dogs,’’ they wrote. ‘‘Only relative to the infant victim did the adult dog receive lower scores of empathy.’’

The scientists suggested that the research showed two things. First, it demonstrated once again that people considered dogs as equivalent members of their family.

‘‘Subjects did not view their dogs as animals, but rather as ‘fur babies’, or family members alongside human children,’’ they wrote.

Second, it showed that feelings of empathy may be related to the perceived helplessness of the victim and people’s tendency to partially blame the victim.