[LUM#14] Out of sight, out of mind
Which species elicit the most empathy and compassion from us, and why? That is the question posed by Michel Raymond, a biologist atthe Institute of Evolutionary Sciences in Montpellier (ISEM).
A turtle or a squirrel—which would you save if they were in mortal danger? A jellyfish or a cactus—which do you feel closer to? Michel Raymond and his colleagues at the National Museum of Natural History posed these questions to nearly 3,500 “judges,” each of whom examined 20 pairs of photographs of animals or plants. The goal? “To determine how our ability to empathize with other organisms and feel compassion for them varies from one species to another, ” explains theISEM researcher, whose study was published in Scientific Reports.
Phylogenetic distance
Why do we choose to save the squirrel rather than the turtle? Are we moved by its beauty? Its size? Its vulnerability? No, according to this research, what determines the compassion or empathy we feel toward the living beings presented to us is the phylogenetic distance that separates us from them. “The emotional map of the living world thus constructed shows that the more evolutionarily distant an organism is from us, the less we identify with it and the less we are moved by its fate, ” explains Michel Raymond.
When a species is evolutionarily close to us, such as the great apes, we share characteristics with it—particularly physical ones—that have gradually developed over the course of our shared evolution. “And we can more easily recognize in them a kindred spirit, and adopt toward them the same prosocial behaviors that we do toward our fellow humans.”
Alter ego
So, unsurprisingly, at the top of our emotional hierarchy are the great apes: orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees, which most strongly evoke our empathy and compassion. The volunteers who participated in the study even directed these feelings more toward the orangutan than toward… humans, who were also among the species presented. Conversely, at the bottom of the list of the “unloved” are notably the cactus, the mushroom, the jellyfish, and even the tick. “The latter breaks every negative record!” notes Michel Raymond.
These findings, according to the researchers , “encourage us to examine the influence of our sensory and emotional biases on social issues involving our relationship with the rest of the living world.”
Empathy or compassion?
While empathy refers to our ability to intuitively perceive the emotions and mental states of others, compassion refers to a feeling aroused by the suffering of others, coupled with a selfless desire to alleviate it.
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