ArticleScientific reports2019
Empathy and compassion toward other species decrease with evolutionary divergence time.
Article in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 papers.
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Who cites it
47 citing papers in PubMed.
- Taxonomic Bias Persists in Ecology and Evolution Research Despite Decades of Concern.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Drivers of Taxonomic Bias in Ecology and Evolution: Insights From Ethologists and Behavioural Ecologists.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Heterospecific social behavior in primates: insights into the evolutionary roots of pet-keeping.Primates; journal of primatology · 2026Article
- Global Data From Great Ape Zoo Populations Confirm a High Prevalence of Overweight Individuals.American journal of primatology · 2026Article
- Empathy for pain in humans and animals differs based on species, psychosocial and cultural factors.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Morphological resemblance to injections elicits fear, disgust, and reduced conservation intent toward insects.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Influence of phylogenetic proximity on children's empathy towards other species.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Why Humans Prefer Phylogenetically Closer Species: An Evolutionary, Neurocognitive, and Cultural Synthesis.Biology · 2025Review
- When development constricts our moral circle.Nature human behaviour · 2025Review
- Experience with animals, religion, and social integration predict anthropomorphism across five countries.iScience · 2025Article
- The effect of fear and compassion on human willingness to protect predators and prey.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- It Matters Who You Ask: Validity and Reliability of Animal Empathy Scoring Scales in Canadian Public and Participants in Beef Production.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Mindful eating is associated with a healthier plant-based diet in the NutriNet-Santé study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- How Happy Do These Animals Look? Exploring Factors Influencing Children's Perceptions of Animal Welfare at the Zoo.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Fundamental questions in meiofauna research highlight how small but ubiquitous animals can improve our understanding of Nature.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Prediction of prognosis and immune response in lung adenocarcinoma based on mitophagy and lactate-related gene signatures.International journal of clinical oncology · 2025Article
- Animal emotions and consciousness: a preliminary assessment of researchers' perceptions and biases and prospects for future progress.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Selective and prolonged attention to emotional scenes in humans and bonobos.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Tasting to preserve: An educational activity to promote children's positive attitudes towards intraspecific diversity conservation.PloS one · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Currently the planet is inhabited by several millions of extremely diversified species. Not all of them arouse emotions of the same nature or intensity in humans. Little is known about the extent of our affective responses toward them and the factors that may explain these differences. Our online survey involved 3500 raters who had to make choices depending on specific questions designed to either assess their empathic perceptions or their compassionate reactions toward an extended photographic sampling of organisms. Results show a strong negative correlation between empathy scores and the divergence time separating them from us. However, beyond a certain time of divergence, our empathic perceptions stabilize at a minimum level. Compassion scores, although based on less spontaneous choices, remain strongly correlated to empathy scores and time of divergence. The mosaic of features characterizing humans has been acquired gradually over the course of the evolution, and the phylogenetically closer a species is to us, the more it shares common traits with us. Our results could be explained by the fact that many of these traits may arouse sensory biases. These anthropomorphic signals could be able to mobilize cognitive circuitry and to trigger prosocial behaviors usually at work in human relationships.
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