What Helps Humans Understand Animals’ Perspectives?

In this study, perspective-taking is defined as “mentally adopting or understanding another individual’s point of view by imagining their thoughts and feelings.” It’s a cognitive process that can also be accompanied by empathy — sharing in that individual’s emotional states.

Given how many decisions humans make that affect other species, perspective-taking could be a powerful force for improving animal welfare. The authors note a growing movement to represent non-human interests in policy, including a push to grant rights to ecosystems and natural entities (e.g., legal personhood status for the Te Awa Tupua river in New Zealand). However, there are many psychological and cultural barriers to achieving the goal of incorporating animals’ perspectives into human decision-making.

Up until this point, most research in psychology has focused on people’s ability to understand the perspectives of other humans. Considering the perspectives of animals comes with its own set of challenges. Lack of contact or experience with animals and beliefs that animals are less important or have less agency than humans are two important factors. Furthermore, the discomfort of thinking about and empathizing with the suffering of animals may cause people to avoid perspective-taking altogether.

To better understand the barriers to perspective-taking, this study explored the subjective experiences of people asked to imagine what animals in the dairy industry are thinking and feeling. The participants were 51 undergraduate psychology students from a Canadian university who participated for course credit. All but 11 students identified as female and all but two described themselves as omnivores.

Using Zoom-based focus groups of up to six people, the study exposed each group to one of two types of storytelling about cow-calf separation, a common practice in the dairy industry. Rather than setting up a formal comparison, the researchers used the two formats to broaden the range of reactions they could examine. This gave them a richer set of responses to draw on for their analysis.

• Written description: For a less immersive experience, half of the groups heard a description of cow-calf separation based on the National Farm Animal Care Council’s 2009 Dairy Code. This description explains that letting calves stay with their mothers longer can improve the cow’s postpartum health while also lowering the calf’s risk of illness or death. But it notes that the longer the two stay together, the more stressful their eventual separation becomes for both animals. Regardless of timing, it stresses that calves need adequate colostrum, the antibody-rich milk produced right after birth.
• Video footage: For a more immersive experience, the remaining groups watched a 22-minute clip from the 2021 documentary Cow, which captures the experience of a cow and calf being separated using low and close-up camera angles. The film contains no narration and de-emphasizes farm workers. Prior to showing the video, the facilitator asked participants to take the perspective of both the cow and her calf by paying close attention to how they communicate, including their vocalizations and other expressions.

After sharing either the description or video with participants, the facilitator guided discussion among the focus groups around the practice of cow-calf separation. The transcripts of the discussions were analyzed for how participants approached perspective-taking.

Overall, participants in both groups acknowledged animal perspectives, especially relating to the maternal bond and the stress and confusion that separation causes. However, the video-watchers were generally more engaged in the discussion. They described animal perspectives and their own feelings in more detail, speculated on animal experiences more, and expressed more insights into how human-created environments and actions might impact animals. One participant, for example, pointed to the cow’s refusal to eat after her calf was taken away as a sign she was “showing grief in her own way”; another called it “pretty frustrating” that the cow was “milked by machines” rather than allowed to nurse her own calf. The video-watchers were also more likely to bring up challenges to perspective-taking.

While perspective-taking can foster empathy, it can also cause distress, especially in response to the video. Some participants felt shocked, disturbed, or uncomfortable, which can lead to a distress avoidance reaction. The researchers believe that distress avoidance may explain why some participants denied that cows can suffer, as well as why many seemed unwilling to come to any conclusion about whether cow-calf separation is an appropriate practice.

Several factors influenced participants’ ability to take animals’ perspectives. One is the medium itself. Compared to hearing the written description read aloud, watching the actual experiences and emotions of the cow and calf was far more vivid, and the video-watchers seemed more able to imagine what they were going through. As one participant put it, with no narration, “you could just so clearly see the emotions from both of the cows… it just emphasized that they do have emotions and feel the same things we feel.”

Another is anthropocentric norms, or the widespread cultural belief that humans are more important than or superior to other species. This makes it difficult for some people to imagine that other species share any characteristics with humans, especially when it comes to mental states and emotions. Conversely, others may be concerned about taking the comparison too far, seeing anthropomorphism (ascribing human characteristics to animals) as a concern. For instance, one participant wondered “are we actually just projecting ourselves onto that animal?” in response to the video.

Lastly, the focus on cows, a mammal who forms a maternal bond, may be less challenging for perspective-taking than a more distant species. It’s possible that the same study conducted with a bird or a reptile, for example, would have different results.

The researchers conclude that progress on having animals’ perspectives incorporated into human decision-making relies on three factors:

1. Whether decision-makers are actually motivated to engage with animals’ points of view;
2. Whether they have access to reliable, detailed, and context-specific information about animals’ experiences; and
3. Finding the right psychological distance (i.e., close enough to trigger empathy, but not so intense that it pushes people toward distress avoidance).

For advocates, these findings don’t necessarily mean that video is the better medium. The authors are explicit that their design can’t support a claim like that. What the study perhaps points to instead is vividness as a driver of deeper engagement. However, that same vividness is also what seemed to distress some students, which can limit perspective-taking. The practical lesson for outreach materials may therefore be less about which format to choose and more about how evocative they are. By testing how intense a piece feels to different audiences, advocates can find the right balance that fosters empathy without overwhelming people, enabling them to meaningfully consider animals’ perspectives.