Humans care more about dogs than other people, study finds

Humans care more about dogs than they do about each other, new research has found.

People are more likely to be emotionally disturbed when dogs are being abused than adult humans, a study involving 256 undergraduates has revealed.

Participants were given four fake newspaper clippings describing police reports about an attack “with a baseball bat by an unknown assailant”, the Times reported.

It went on: “Arriving on the scene a few minutes after the attack, a police officer found the victim with one broken leg, multiple lacerations, and unconscious.”

But in each version, the victim was different: either a one-year-old infant, a 30-year-old adult, a puppy or a six-year-old adult dog.

After participants had read the story, researchers from the Northeastern University in Boston asked them to describe their emotions using a standard set of questions designed to produce a measure of empathy.

They found participants who’d read a story about a child, dog, or puppy measured similar levels of empathy. But the human adult provoked less of a response.

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

They added that the results showed people considered dogs as equivalent to members of their family, and that feelings of empathy may be related to the perceived helplessness of the victim.

This is not the first time humans have been proven to care about dogs more than people: two years ago, a study from medical research charity Harrison’s Fund found people were more likely to donate money to help dogs than humans.

In the study participants were shown two adverts, both of which posed the question: “Would you give £5 to save Harrison from a slow, painful death?”

The only difference between the adverts was the picture - one featured Harrison as a little boy, the other as a dog. Harrison the dog received the most donations.