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Abstract

The way humans relate to other animals is fundamentally shaped by whether we perceive ourselves as unique, with feelings and thoughts not shared by other animals. How beliefs about animals’ ability to feel and think develop across cultures remains largely unexplored. We asked children and adolescents (4–17 years, N = 1025) and adults (N = 190) from 33 urban and rural communities across 15 countries whether animals have thoughts or feelings (judgments of presence), and whether those thoughts or feelings are human-like (judgments of similarity). Bayesian analyses revealed that participants generally ascribed non-human animals the ability for thoughts and feelings. However, they universally denied that animals have human-like thoughts, with these beliefs emerging early in development across all societies and remaining stable across the lifespan. There was more cultural variation found in whether participants attributed human-like feelings to animals. Human mental exceptionalism appears to be a human universal and is restricted to human-like thoughts. Implications for human-animal relationships and ethical considerations for the treatment and conservation of other animals are discussed.

Publication Date

2026-01-01

Publication Title

Journal of Environmental Psychology

Volume

109

ISSN

0272-4944

Acceptance Date

2025-11-25

Deposit Date

2026-03-03

Keywords

Child development, Emotion attribution, Folk psychology, Folk theories, Human-animal relations, Mind perception

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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