East Carolina University
Department of
Psychology
Sharp, H. W., Wuensch, K.
L., Eppler, M. A., & Harju, B. L.
(2006, April). Narcissism,
empathy, and attitudes towards animals. Presented at the Spring
Conference of the
In recent decades, researchers studied numerous
variables in regards to their relationship with attitudes towards
animals. Several studies report a variety of variables with significant
correlations to attitudes towards animals, including upbringing, religious
affiliation, major, sex, sex-roles, empathy, and personality (Driscoll, 1992; Furnham, McManus, & Scott, 2003; Gallup & Beckstead, 1988; Hutchins & Armstrong, 1994; Kimball
& Broida, 1991).
Hutchins and Armstrong (1994) found differences in
attitudes towards animals between participants with urban versus rural
upbringings, science and non-science majors, and men and women. In
another study, researchers manipulated the species used and the purpose of the
animal use. (reference) It was found that sex, pet
ownership, religious affiliation, and age were correlated with a person’s
attitudes towards animals, accounting for 5% of the variability. Gallup
and Beckstead (1988) found college students' major to
be correlated with attitudes towards animals. Also women were more
concerned about animal pain and suffering than were men.
Sex differences in attitudes to animals have
frequently been reported. Eldridge and
Gluck (1996) found women more concerned, empathic, and willing to make
sacrifices for animals, while men tended to look at the benefits to
mankind. Women and those with female sex roles (as indicated by the Bem Sex-Roles Inventory) oppose animal vivisection more than
do men and those with male sex roles.(Broida, Tingley, Kimball, & Miele, 1993; Kimball & Broida,
1991).
Several personality traits have been associated with
attitudes towards animals. Kimball and Broida
(1991) investigated the relationships between students’ personality profiles (using
the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), and attitudes to animals. Among
extraverts, sensate and thinking types were found to favor vivisection more
than did intuitive and feeling types.
Broida et al. (1993) conducted another study that looked at
personality aspects in relation to attitudes towards vivisection.
Students completed a survey composed of a number of inventories, including the
Myers-Briggs-Type Inventory, Bem Sex-Roles Inventory,
and the Animal Research Survey which measures empathy for animals and faith in
science. Intuitive and feeling types were more likely to oppose animal
vivisection than their sensate and thinking counterparts. Extraverted
sensate and/or thinking types were more likely to support vivisection than
introverted intuitive and/or feeling types. Findings also showed that more
empathetic persons tended to oppose vivisection.
Furnham, McManus, and Scott (2003) also looked for links
between personality and attitudes towards animals. They examined how the
Big Five (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and
Conscientiousness), empathy, and basic demographics were related to attitudes
towards animals. They found at least one of the four empathy subscales of
Australian researchers Taylor and Signal (2005)
recently conducted aninvestigation of the
relationship between empathy and attitudes towards animals. The study
used the IRI to measure empathy and the Animal Attitude Scale (AAS) to assess
attitudes towards animal rights. Results revealed that the
Empathic-Concern subscale of the IRI significantly correlated with the
AAS. Women scored higher on both the Empathic-Concern subscale and the
AAS score. A multiple regression showed that Empathic-Concern and sex
were both significant predictors of AAS scores, accounting for 13.7% of the
variance.
Wuensch and Poteat (1998)
found that out of the 315 college students that took part in their survey, 40%
supported animal research used for cosmetics. This is compared to 54% who
supported animal use in medical research and 31% in theoretical research.
These findings left the current researcher with questions concerning the
self-importance, entitlement, and lack of empathy that these college students
may have experienced. Self-importance,
entitlement, and lack of empathy are three of the nine diagnostic criteria of
the Narcissistic Personality Disorder as defined by the DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000). Many
scholars, such as Lasch (1979), have argued that
narcissism exists not only as a clinical entity but also as a less severe subclinical trait form.
Raskin and Hall (1979) developed the Narcissistic
Personality Inventory (NPI) with the intention of measuring narcissism in a
non-clinical population. Prifitera and Ryan
(1984) administered the NPI to clinical populations including some patients
diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Scores on the NPI
are higher for patients with NPD than those without the disorder. The NPI
has frequently been employed to measure narcissism in various non-clinical
populations (e.g., Biscardi & Schill,
1985; Caroll, 1989; Munro, Bore, & Powis, 2005).
In 1984, Emmons discovered the NPI contained four
identifiable factors. He labeled these factors Leadership/Authority
(L/A), Self Absorption/Self-Admiration (S/S), Superiority/Arrogance (S/A), and Exploitiveness/Entitlement (E/E). Other studies have
reported finding and using these same factors (Biscardi
& Schill, 1985; Lapsley
& Aalsma, 2006; Watson, Grisham, Trotter, & Biderman 1984).
There are several reasons to expect that narcissism
may be related to attitudes towards animals. Empathy is known to be
related to both narcissism and attitudes towards animals. Biscardi and Schill (1985)
studied 97 college men and found their scores on the NPI correlated with the
Tolerance and Consideration subscale and the Social Self-confidence subscale of
Hogan’s Scale for empathy (ref for Hogan’s scale).
In another study, negative correlations were observed between both the overall
NPI and the E/E subscale with two measures of empathy (Watson et al.,
1984). Another study used the Interpersonal Reactivity Index to measure
empathy and found the NPI to be significantly related to each of its subscales,
but the correlation with the Fantasy subscale was found to be only half the
strength of the others (Watson, Biderman, & Sawrie, 1994).
Both narcissism and attitudes towards animals have
been reported to be significantly correlated with sex and sex roles. Men
score significantly higher on the NPI than do women (Carroll, 1987; Carroll,
1989; Watson et al. 1984; Watson et al. 1994). Masculine groups also tend
to have higher levels of narcissism than feminine or androgynous groups
(Carroll, 1989; Watson, Biderman, & Boyd, 1989;
Watson, et al. 1994).
Big Five personality factors have been shown to be
related to both narcissism and attitudes towards animals. Several studies
have been conducted involving narcissism and it's relation with the Big
Five. Extraversion was found to have a positive correlation with
narcissism (Biscardi & Schill,
1985; Bradlee & Emmons, 1992; Emmons, 1984; Lee
& Ashton, 2005). Findings also suggest that the entitlement subscale
is associated with low agreeableness and high extraversion (Bradlee
& Emmons, 1992; Exline, Baumeister,
Bushman, Campbell, & Finkel, 2004). Neuroticism
and agreeableness share negative correlations with the total NPI (Bradlee & Emmons, 1992).
The purpose of the present research was to examine
the relationships among narcissism, empathy, sex, and attitudes towards
animals. Our prediction was that favorable attitudes to animals would be
positively associated with empathy and being female and negatively associated
with narcissism.
Method
Participants
One hundred and seventy-two undergraduate psychology
students (121 women and 51 men) from
East Carolina University participated in the study, a sample size sufficient to yield a power of 80% or more for detecting
medium sized effects (d = .5, r = .3). Undergraduate
students made appointments to participate through the a
research tracking system employed by the Department of Psychology.
Students arrived in small groups of up to thirty, and after the researcher
reviewed participant rights and instructions, students had an ample hour and a
half to complete the survey. Ages ranged from 18 to 52, with an average
age of 20.
Materials
The survey used consisted of three scales, measuring
attitudes towards animals, empathy, and narcissism. These scales were
accompanied by demographic items measuring sex, age, race, class, major, pet
importance, degree of vegetarianism, farm experience, and rural versus urban
upbringing.
Past researchers have used a variety of instruments
to measure attitudes towards animals (e.g., Driscoll, 1992; Fernham,
McManus, & Scott, 2003; Herzog, Betchart, &
Pittman, 1991). We used the 28-item Animal Rights Scale (ARS)
designed by Wuensch, Jenkins, and Poteat (2002).
This scale includes two subscales: Support
for Animal Rights Opposition to Animal Research. Wuensch et al. reported
the scale to have excellent reliability (.93).
The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) was chosen to
measure empathy because it is a multidimensional empathy inventory that
measures both cognitive and emotional empathy. Cognitive empathy is
measured by the Perspective-Taking subscale (PT), designed to assess “the
tendency to spontaneously adopt the psychological point of view of others in
everyday life” (pp.113-114) and the Fantasy subscale (FS), designed to “tap
respondents’ tendencies to transpose themselves imaginatively into the feelings
and actions of fictitious characters in books, movies, and plays.” (p.114)
Emotional empathy is composed of the Empathic Concern subscale (EC), which
measures “the tendency to experience feelings of sympathy and compassion for
unfortunate others” (p.114), and the Personal Distress subscale (PD), that
assesses “feelings of personal anxiety and unease in tense interpersonal
settings”. (p.114) Research shows these subscales to be separate and
valid (
Narcissism was measured using the Narcissistic
Personality Inventory (NPI) (Raskin & Hall,
1979). The validity and reliability of this scale is well-established (Raskin & Terry, 1988) Emmons
(1984) ran a factor analysis on the NPI and found four factors he called Exploitativeness/Entitlement, Leadership/Authority,
Superiority/Arrogance, and Self-absorption/Self-admiration. In a latter
study, Emmons (1987) examined each factor loading for the 56 questions of the
NPI and found 17 questions with low loadings. We chose to omit the
questions with low loadings, leaving us with a 37 item instrument for the
current study.
Procedure
Researchers asked the participants to complete a
study designed to assess individual differences and attitudes towards
animals. Participants received verbal instructions reminding them to read
each section carefully and be sure to answer each question.
Results
Initially we examined the reliability of each scale
to insure its usefulness. Acceptable Cronbach’s
alphas were found for the Animal Rights Scale (α
= 0.892), the Support for Animal Rights subscale (α
= 0.843), and the Opposition to Animal Research subscale (α
= 0.815). Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory showed the
alpha of the overall scale to be acceptable (α
= 0.842), but poor reliability for three of the four subscales caused us to
totally disregard the subscales. Examination of the Interpersonal
Reactivity Index’s reliability revealed acceptable alphas for each of the four
subscales.
Zero-order correlations between the ARS and several
predictor variables are shown in Table 1. Results showed significant
positive relationships with being female, Perspective-Taking, pet importance,
and cat preference.
Sex differences are summarized in Table 2.
Results showed women to have more supportive attitudes towards animals, and higher
scores on each of the empathy subscales, with the exception of
perspective-taking. Men had higher levels of narcissism than did women.
Table 3 summarizes the relationships found between
the ARS subscales and the predictor variables. Narcissism significantly
correlated with the Opposition to Animal Research subscale (-0.152, p>.05).
Perspective-Taking still held significant relationships with each subscale,
though more strongly correlated with the Support for Animal Rights subscale
(see Table 3).
Multiple regression analysis was employed to predict
ARS from sex, narcissism, and each empathy subscale. The resulting model
accounted for 11% of the variance in ARS.
Only perspective taking and sex had significant partial effects.
Discussion
Though results failed to support the hypothesis that
narcissism is significantly related to overall attitudes towards animals,
narcissism was positively correlated with support for animal research. We
found sex differences on narcissism and attitudes towards animals consistent
with past research. (Broida et al. 1993; Carroll,
1989; Furnham et al. 2003) The most interesting
sex difference concerns women having significantly higher scores on every
empathy subscale except for perspective-taking. However, analysis
revealed perspective-taking to be the only empathy measure related to attitudes
towards animals, a finding somewhat inconsistent with past studies. Furnham, McManus,
and Scott (2003) collected data using IRI subscales and an attitudinal scale
designed to measure attitudes towards animal use in medical and psychological
research. Results revealed empathic-concern and perspective-taking to be significantly
related to the attitude scale, with empathic-concern being the strongest
predictor. Another researcher conducted a study using the IRI in order to
investigate empathy and attitudes to animals (Taylor & Signal, 2005).
Clearly there is uncertainty as to whether cognitive
or emotional empathy is related to attitudes towards animals. One should
point out though, that each study investigating this question has used
different measures of attitudes to animals. Future research is needed to
determine the specific relationship between the multiple facets of both empathy
and attitudes towards animals.
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