The researchers had hypothesized that younger victims would receive more empathy, regardless of species. Instead, they found “Age makes a difference for empathy toward human victims, but not for dog victims,” the researchers wrote in their study abstract, which will be presented this week at the American Sociological Association meeting in New York.
“The fact that adult human crime victims receive less empathy than do child, puppy, and full-grown dog victims suggests that adult dogs are regarded as dependent and vulnerable, not unlike their younger canine counterparts and kids,” study researcher Jack Levin, a sociology and criminology professor at Northeastern University in Boston, said in a statement.
“It appears that adult humans are viewed as capable of protecting themselves, while full-grown dogs are just seen as larger puppies,” Levin said.
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