What is it about?
People differ in how they view the emotional lives of animals—for example, whether animal emotions are complex and genuine, and whether those emotions should matter morally. Across two U.S. surveys, people who held stronger beliefs about animal emotions reported avoiding more products, foods, and activities involving animals. These included animal-derived foods and clothing, products tested on animals, and animal-based entertainment. The research also explored where such beliefs may come from, including past experience with pets, formal education, media, and personal belief systems.
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Why is it important?
Consumer choices involving food, clothing, personal products, and entertainment can affect how animals are used and treated. Previous research has mainly connected beliefs about animals’ minds and emotions with people’s attitudes or intentions. This study extends that work to reported behavior across several areas of everyday life. The findings suggest that beliefs about animal emotions may be one part of the psychology behind animal-related consumer choices. Because the studies were observational and relied on self-reports, they cannot show that changing beliefs will change behavior, but they identify an important possibility for future research.
Perspectives
My next research goal is to develop science-backed interventions that use what we know about animal emotions to improve attitudes and behavior toward animals. Animal science is moving toward broad agreement that many animals experience genuine and complex emotional states. I hope this study helps lay the groundwork for testing whether communicating that evidence can shift everyday consumer choices in ways that benefit animals.
Michael Kisley
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Beliefs about animal emotions are associated with self-reported consumer behaviors related to animal use, PLOS One, July 2026, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0354794.
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