Relationship between emotional intelligence and empathy towards humans and animals

EI and empathy towards humans

EI can be conceptualized as the capacity to process emotional information and comprises the “ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth” (Mayer & Salovey, 1997, p. 10). Thus, both intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional abilities are considered to fall under this category of mental abilities (Mayer & Salovey, 1997).

Particular interest has been paid to the link between EI and empathy, since the latter constitutes a relevant factor in social interaction and prosocial behaviour (Gilet et al., 2013). Empathy, as a multidimensional construct that comprises emotional, cognitive and motivational components (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004; Cuff et al., 2014), is based on the abilities to recognize, understand, and share the feelings of others (Davis, 1980; De Waal, 2008; Preston & De Wall, 2002). More specifically, cognitive empathy reflects the way in which we understand others, their experiences and emotions, emotional empathy involves the emotional response to the experience of others and actually sharing that particular emotional state with the other (Smith, 2006), which often generates an empathic concern, understood as compassion or motivational empathy, which leads a person to take action to relieve the suffering of others (Eisenberg & Miller, 1987; Pfattheicher, Sassenrath & Schindler, 2015).

Considering that perceiving and understanding emotion in others and emotional awareness are abilities involved in EI, it might be reasonable to suppose that there is a positive relationship between EI and empathy (Schutte et al., 2001). In fact, there are parallels between some of the features of EI and empathy. Petrides, Furnham & Martin (2004) found evidence to suggest that the trait EI models comprise affect-related functioning such as emotional awareness, empathy and relationship skills. According to Mayer & Salovey (1997), an individual with optimum EI can better perceive, understand, and manage their own emotions, and are more likely to be skilled at generalizing these abilities of perceiving, understanding, and managing to the emotions of others. Some authors have even argued that empathy is a result of EI, since the ability to reason about emotions in ourselves and others will have an impact on the accurate interpretation and management of social interactions and emotional experiences (Mayer, Roberts & Barsade, 2008).

Various authors have delved further into this relationship and confirmed that individuals with higher EI are also more empathetic towards other people (Fitness & Curtis, 2005; Mayer, Caruso & Salovey, 1999; Schutte et al., 2001). This positive relationship has been established when evaluating EI using different types of measures, including self-report (Fitness & Curtis, 2005; Salovey et al., 2002; Schutte et al., 2001) and performance tests (Ciarrochi, Chan & Caputi, 2000; Mayer, Caruso & Salovey, 1999). In particular, some studies found that attention to emotions correlated positively with the empathy dimensions of empathic involvement and personal distress (Aguilar-Luzón & Augusto, 2009; Extremera & Fernández-Berrocal, 2004). A higher level of emotional clarity and repair has also been positively associated with perspective taking and negatively associated with personal distress, both of which are aspects of empathic behaviour (Aguilar-Luzón & Augusto, 2009; Extremera & Fernández-Berrocal, 2004; Ramos, Fernandez-Berrocal & Extremera, 2007).

Although the relationship between EI and human empathy has been explored in the literature, rather less attention has been paid to the issue of how EI relates to empathy directed towards other entities, including empathy for animals. Given that empathy is related to the socio-emotional abilities to recognize, understand and share the feelings of others, and that understanding and being aware of the emotional signs in animals (with more or less phylogenetic proximity to humans) can pose particular challenges since this is quite distinct from human interactions, the relationship between EI and empathy towards animals could be quite different from the one established with humans.

Relationship between empathy directed to humans and to animals

Over the past few decades, public opinion has shifted from the traditional conceptions of animals as objects to be used by humans to a broader ethical perspective of care and compassion towards them. In fact, the public attitudes to animals related to increasing sensitivity and concern about animal use have developed in parallel with the stronger beliefs about the ability of animals to experience pain and suffering, along with their cognitive abilities and their sentience (Cornish et al., 2018). This progressive change in society’s attitudes towards animals is most likely to be based on the increasing proximity with animals in our daily life (e.g., pets) and on the countless contexts in which housed animals such as zoos, aquariums, museums, sanctuaries, shelters, nature centres and others offer opportunities to have educational experiences with animals and nature (Young, Khalil & Wharton, 2018).

Within the broader research area on the nature of empathy, the earliest studies exploring the relationship between human individuals and other animals emerged and, in particular, these works demonstrated that humans are able to feel empathy for animals (e.g., Emauz et al., 2016; Paul, 2000). Moreover, empathy towards animals seem to have originated in a similar way as that shown towards other humans (Ascione, 1992; Kohl, 2012; Ruckert, 2016). In his precursory research, Paul (2000) elaborated on the previous empathy definition put forward by Eisenberg (1995) and specified that empathy towards animals entailed a vicarious emotional response to the emotions or states of animals, and the cognitive understanding of their thoughts or feelings. For Drane (2009) empathy is the ability to feel what others are feeling, regardless of whether this comes from a direct relationship between humans or animals. Jorge Ritchman (cited in García, 2014) also extrapolated empathy towards our relationship with animals, considering this to be fundamental to our coexistence, since it allows us to perceive the damage that we can cause to other species, feel their suffering, or avoid it (García, 2014). More recently, a metanalytic review on empathy for animals defined empathy as a simulated emotional state that relies on the ability to perceive, understand and care about the experiences or perspectives of another person or animal (Young, Khalil & Wharton, 2018). Therefore, empathy towards animals comprises the same three abilities as empathy towards humans–affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and empathic concern (Cuff et al., 2014). Affective empathy is the ability to sense or physically experience the emotions of another (Cuff et al., 2014). For instance, when an individual observes an animal in a state of suffering, he/she may experience distress as if they were responding to the same stimulus (Eres et al., 2015). Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand the experiences of others by recognizing and imagining their reality (Cuff et al., 2014), and might support (or not) our affective empathy. For instance, it supports our affective empathy when we believe the animal is suffering because we recognized that it is physically injured; or it does not provide such support, when, for instance, we understand that an animal is isolated due to their specific biological characteristics and it is not a sign of depression. Empathic concern, on the other hand, can motivate a person to take action and relieve the suffering of the animal (Eisenberg & Miller, 1987; Pfattheicher, Sassenrath & Schindler, 2015), and in that case, an individual would help an animal that is injured or trapped.

Some authors consider that empathy for animals has a strong heritable component and can evolve differently depending on the particular species of animals (Bradshaw & Paul, 2010). Research suggests that the development of empathic behaviour is due to its adaptative components, which would enable pro-social behaviour and inhibit aggression. Another possibility explored by some investigators is that the process of nurturing (e.g., providing food and shelter, care-giving) infants and babies would have had an impact on the development of the empathic behaviours of humans, considering that the ability to empathetically respond to the distress shown by children is a crucial component of the emotional nurturance process (De Waal, 2008).

Moreover, the literature also indicates that there is a positive relationship between the empathy directed to humans and animals, although this is not of a high magnitude (Ellingsen et al., 2010; Emauz et al., 2016; Paul, 2000). Other studies have also found that concerns about animal suffering are associated with higher levels of empathy for humans (Ascione, 1992; Komorosky & O’Neal, 2015). However, when exploring whether individuals particularly characterized by high levels of affection towards animals have high levels of affection towards humans, the results are contradictory (Paul, 2005). For instance, a very high level of affection for animals can be related to a displacement of affection from people to pets (Veevers, 1985). Therefore, it is not always evident that in order to be empathetic towards animals the individual should also be empathetic towards humans or vice versa. These findings suggest that empathy for humans and for animals—whilst many times related—are probably not the same unitary construct, representing different psychological concepts or, at least, separately influenced by specific factors (Paul, 2000; Paul, 2005). Perhaps the possibility that both types of empathy have shared and non-shared components or because they act under the influence of specific moderator mechanisms could explain why differences are often observed in the empathic responses shown towards human individuals and other animals (Paul, 2000).

EI and empathy towards animals

To date, there are no reports regarding the relationship between EI and empathy directed to animals of any kind, except humans. One could argue that EI is related to several positive emotional outcomes such as empathy for humans (Fitness & Curtis, 2005; Mayer, Caruso & Salovey, 1999; Schutte et al., 2001) and that a similar association is likely to be found for empathy towards animals. However, as previously described, the literature on empathy for animals has presented mixed results, that is, supporting the association between attitudinal and prosocial behaviours towards animals and towards people (Ellingsen et al., 2010; Emauz et al., 2016; Komorosky & O’Neal, 2015) or indicating that those behaviours can be independent (Paul, 2005). Moreover, the dynamics of the relationships between individuals are far more complex than those established with animals. One possibility is that the ability to understand and manage emotions based on human interactions might prove to be insufficient to perceive and understand the emotions of animals, which hinders the capacity of humans to empathise with them. Therefore, it is possible that for there to be an association between EI and empathy for animals, the influence of other variables—such as the person’s current experience with animals—could be critical. In this regard, EI can be associated with empathy for humans and other positive human-oriented outcomes but might not necessarily be correlated with animal-oriented constructs, for instance, advocating for animal rights, being compassionate towards animals in distress, or taking a stance against the use of animals for scientific purposes.

Gender differences in EI and empathy

Previous studies in the literature have revealed gender differences in EI, and in empathy for humans and animals. Whilst in general, women score higher than men on the main factors that constitute EI, this difference appears to depend on the type of instrument used. Specifically, when a performance-based instrument is used, women score higher than men on all dimensions; however, when using a self-report instrument, particularly the TMMS (Salovey et al., 1995), women tend to score higher than men on the dimension of attention to emotions, and lower on the dimensions of emotional clarity and repair (Cabello & Fernández-Berrocal, 2015; Fernández-Berrocal & Extremera, 2008; Joseph & Newman, 2010; Navarro-Bravo et al., 2019). Further, previous studies indicate that women, compared with men, tend to exhibit higher levels of empathy for both humans and animals (Angantyr, Eklund & Hansen, 2011; Klein & Hodges, 2001; Paul, 2000; Serpell, 2004).

Aim

The main objective of this research was to investigate the relationship between EI and empathy for humans and animals. We conducted a detailed study through the analysis of several EI and empathy sub-dimensions. In addition, we examined the possible effect of previous experience with animals on these relationships. Based on the findings of the previous literature, we also explored possible gender-related differences in the scores of EI and empathy. We hypothesized that (1) there is a positive relationship between EI and empathy for animals; (2) there is a positive relationship between empathy for humans and empathy for animals; (3) with respect to the relationship between EI and empathy for animals, we conducted an exploratory analysis since it is not possible to formulate a clear hypothesis given the mixed findings reported in the previous literature; and finally, (4) we proposed that the relationships between EI, human empathy and empathy for animals may depend on the degree of proximity between the individual and animals (operationalized according to whether they have pets or not).

Participants

The sample was composed of four hundred and seventy-one adult volunteers (34.4% male). They were recruited through advertisements at the University of Málaga, social networks, and online platforms. The age of the participants ranged from 18 to 65 years with a mean of 26.15 years (SD = 10.10). Two hundred and fifty-eight of the participants were pet owners. All participants were informed that confidentiality and anonymity of the collected data would be assured, and they were treated in accordance with the Helsinki declaration (World Medical Association, 2008). The study was approved by The Research Ethics Committee of the University of Málaga as part of the project PSI2017-84170-R (IRB approval number CEUMA 14-2019-H).

Procedure and instruments

Online questionnaires were completed by the participants through the LimeSurvey platform (http://limesurvey.org). The respondents accessed the questionnaires via an email link sent by the authors. An informed consent form was included in the survey, and the participants were assured of confidentiality and anonymity. To avoid missing data, the questionnaires were set up so that blank responses were not allowed. For each participant, this entire process took approximately 20 min to complete.

A description of each scale is detailed below:

Trait-Meta Mood Scale (TMMS; Salovey et al., 1995). The TMMS is a 24-item self-report scale widely used to assess EI. The questionnaire includes three sub-dimension scores: attention to emotions (awareness of our emotions, the ability to recognize our feelings and know what they mean), emotional clarity (ability to know, understand, distinguish and understand how emotions evolve, ability to integrate emotions in our thinking), and emotional repair (ability to regulate and control positive and negative emotions). Responses are given on a 5-point Likert type scale ranging from 1 (“Disagree strongly”) to 5 (“Agree strongly”). We used the Spanish version of the scale (Fernández-Berrocal, Extremera & Ramos, 2004). In our study, the scale showed good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha values of the sub-dimensions ranged between 0.85 and 0.91).

Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1983) is a 28-item self-report scale used to measure empathy. This scale is composed of four sub-dimensions: perspective taking (ability of subjects to adopt other people’s point of view), empathic concern (tendency of subjects to experience feelings of compassion and concern towards others), personal distress (tendency of subjects to experience feelings of anxiety and discomfort when witnessing the negative experiences of others) and fantasy (tendency of subjects to identify with fictional characters from books and movies). Each item uses a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“Does not describe me at all”) to 5 (“Describes me very well”). We used the Spanish version of the scale (Escrivá, Navarro & García, 2004). In our study, the scale showed adequate internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha value of the total score was 0.79 and for the sub-dimensions this ranged between 0.66 and 0.76).

Animal Empathy Scale (AES; Paul, 2000) is a 22-item self-report scale used to measure empathy for animals through the assessment of the individual’s feelings about animals and their treatment. The scale comprises items that enquire about both empathic relationships (e.g., “It makes me sad to see an animal on its own in a cage”; “It upsets me when I see helpless old animals”) and non-empathic relationships (e.g., “Dogs sometimes whine and whimper for no real reason”; “Sometimes I am amazed how upset people get when an old pets dies”). Responses are scored by a 9-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“Disagree strongly”) to 9 (“Agree strongly”). We used the Spanish version of the scale in our study (La Torre Gómez, 2017). In our study, the scale showed adequate internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha value of the total score was 0.87).

Data analysis

First, descriptive statistics were computed to examine the characteristics of the scores of the measures employed, both for the total sample and divided by gender. Second, gender differences were contrasted using t-tests. Third, differences according to pet and non-pet ownership were examined by t-tests. Fourth, Pearson’s correlations were conducted to explore associations between the study variables. Fifth, in order to verify if the association between empathy for animals and the variables of empathy for humans and EI are influenced by having pets, additional Pearson’s correlation analyses were carried out by dividing the sample into pet owners and non-pet owners. Besides, using Fisher’s Z-test, we tested if there were significant differences between the human empathy and EI correlation and the animal empathy and EI correlation, in the latter case for both the total sample and the sample divided according to pet ownership status. Sixth, we conducted hierarchical multiple regression analyses in order to identify the study variables most strongly associated with empathy for animals. Pet ownership, gender and age were entered at Step 1, the three EI sub-dimensions were entered at Step 2, and the four human empathy sub-dimensions were entered at Step 3. Finally, we explored the possible moderating effect of pet ownership on the significant relationships observed in the previous regression analysis. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, Pearson’s correlations, Fisher’s Z-test and regression analyses were carried out using SPSS^® version 24.0 (IBM Corporation, Armonk. NY, USA) and FZT computator (http://psych.unl.edu/psycrs/statpage/regression.html). SPSS PROCESS macro 2.16, Model 1 (Hayes, 2013) was used for the moderation analysis.