Dear colleagues,

At the Social Psychology Department of Tilburg University, we are conducting a meta-analysis to examine the correlation between different facets of human empathy and various indicators of concern for animals. To capture the latter, we are interested in attitudes as well as behaviors that may be indicative of the value a person attributes to animals and their welfare. We are searching for any unpublished data and papers to include in this meta-analysis.

Inclusion criteria:
(i) includes a quantitative measure of dispositional human to human empathy, empathic concern, personal distress, or perspective-taking (e.g. measured by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI, Davis, 1980), Basic Empathy Scale (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006), Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (Spreng et al., 2009) or similar)

(ii) includes a quantitative measure that captures concern for animal welfare, broadly construed, including
- Attitudes / behaviors regarding treatment, exploitation, moral standing, or rights of animals (e.g. Animal Attitude Scale (Herzog et al., 1991), speciesism (e.g. Caviola et al., 2019), or similar measures)
- Affective components of empathy, such as empathic concern or distress in response to animal suffering (e.g. Animal Empathy Scale (Paul, 2000), or similar measures)
- Meat consumption attitudes or frequency
- Other measures indicative of concern for animal welfare (e.g. donating decisions, consumption choices, membership in animal rights organization etc.)

(iii) While preferably in English, papers in any language are welcome.

If you have relevant data or know of any unpublished related work, we would greatly appreciate hearing from you. Please send your paper / thesis / draft to a.c.poernbacher@tilburguniversity.edu. If in doubt, please email us to see if your study fits.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Best regards,
Anna Carolin Poernbacher (a.c.poernbacher@tilburguniversity.edu)
Thorsten Michael Erle (t.m.erle@tilburguniversity.edu)
Bastian Jaeger (b.jaeger@tilburguniversity.edu)
Seger Breugelmans (s.m.breugelmans@tilburguniversity.edu)