Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

In today’s society, we use animals for many different purposes and the needs of these animals vary greatly. In recent years, the public concern for animals and their welfare has increased. Several factors contribute to the public’s concern, where increased knowledge leads to higher concern. In the Swedish elementary school curriculum, the topics animal empathy, welfare, ethics, and ethology are not included.
This study examines, through a literature review, what the effects of including these topics could be. Results indicate that education focused on improving children’s empathic ability can lead to improved empathy in the children. The results also showed a difference in how much the empathy of the children improved depending on gender, where boys’ empathy improved more than girls’. Education within animal welfare led to an increased knowledge of animal behaviour, cognition, and welfare needs. There was not enough evidence to show the effects of ethics education. Ethological education provided children with an increased knowledge of animal behaviour, a better understanding of human-animal interactions and communication.
There seems to be a relation between empathy for humans and animals where higher empathy for one predicts a higher empathy for the other, however it is not yet known whether this relation is causal or not. If there is a causal link between the empathy for humans and animals, education to heighten empathy for animals could also heighten the empathy for humans, which could have large societal effects such as decreased crime.
There is not enough evidence to conclusively say what the effects of including the studied topics are. However, education about three out of the four topics have potential positive effects for the welfare of animals and humans.