Do Animals Think and Feel Like Us? Most People Say Feeling Yes — Thinking No

Ask whether animals think and feel, and people around the world tend to agree: yes — but not in the same way humans do. A new cross-cultural study suggests that this distinction runs deeper than culture, geography, or age. From early childhood onward, people consistently view human thinking as fundamentally unique, even while granting animals mental and emotional lives of their own.

In a cross-cultural study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, spanning 33 communities across 15 countries, researchers found broad agreement that animals can think and feel — but not like humans. Feelings were more open to interpretation. Thought was not.

“The belief in the uniqueness of human thinking emerges early in life and remains stable across the entire lifespan,” said one of the study's first authors, Dr. Karri Neldner, in a press release. That distinction shapes how people treat other animals:

“The mental capacities attributed to animals also determine their moral status. In this way, people can justify using animals for food, medicine, or entertainment,” Neldner added.

Read More: Why Do Dogs Let Out That Long, Disappointed Sigh?

Animal Minds and Moral Boundaries

Beliefs about animal minds don’t just reflect how people think about animals — they help determine which species are treated as morally relevant. By drawing a sharp line between human and animal thought, people can simultaneously acknowledge animal suffering while justifying the use of animals for food, labor, or entertainment.

Most previous research on animal minds has focused on Western societies. To see whether these beliefs hold more broadly, the team worked with local interviewers in each community, conducting interviews in participants’ native languages.

Cross-Cultural Views on Animal Thought and Emotion

Across cultures, ages, and regions, participants were broadly willing to grant animals mental lives. In the full sample — which included 1,025 children and adolescents aged 4 to 17 and 190 adults from 33 communities in 15 countries — most respondents reported that animals can both think and feel.

Model estimates suggest that children around age 10 were likely to affirm that animals have thoughts nearly 90 percent of the time, and feelings even more often. Endorsement increased with age, with adults across communities overwhelmingly agreeing that animals possess both thoughts and feelings.

But when participants were asked whether animals think like humans, the pattern shifted sharply. Children, adolescents, and adults alike consistently denied that animals have human-like thoughts — a boundary that appeared as early as age four and remained stable across development and cultures.

Feelings told a different story. Participants were far more willing to say that animals experience emotions similar to those of humans, and those judgments varied more across communities. Children living in urban settings were more likely than their rural peers to attribute both thoughts and feelings to animals — a difference reflecting variation in media exposure, education, and daily contact with animals as companions, livestock, or potential threats.

The authors describe this split as a form of “human mental exceptionalism”: a near-universal intuition that what truly separates humans from other animals is not the capacity to feel, but the nature of human thought.

Rethinking Empathy and Ethics for Animals

The findings suggest that appeals to shared emotion may be more effective than appeals to intelligence when it comes to building empathy for animals. While people readily accept that animals feel fear, pain, or affection, they appear far more resistant to the idea that animals reason, plan, or think as humans do.

By tracing these beliefs across cultures and development, the study highlights a deeply rooted intuition about what it means to be human — and raises a central question for conservation and ethics alike: if feeling is shared, but thinking is not, where should moral responsibility begin?

Read More: Your Dog May Look Sad When You Are Happy and Vice Versa — Here’s Why

Article Sources

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

• This article references information from a study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology: Children and adults across 15 countries believe in human uniqueness of mind: a cross-cultural investigation of cross-species mind perception