Assessment of human relationships with other animal species

Few worksexplore the assessments that laypeople make about practices that involve animals. This study tests the multiple sorting tasks (MST) as a method to explore perceptions of animals. 115people of different genders, and age groups, and the condition of owning a pet or not, assessedpractices that make use of animals. Theinquiry was made throughan interview based on a conceptualisation ofthe freesortingsof18 cardswith text and18 images that contain practices involving animals, and whether the conditionof having a pet or notinfluenced their conceptualisations. A multidimensional scaling analysis(MSA), indicates that people classify the practices based on the function animals have for society, however are worriedaboutthe conditions in which animals are used. The results discuss the importance that laypeople giveto the ethics of animal uses, and therole ofhaving apet or not,showing that young people are more sensitive to the welfare of animals.The results concludethat the participants conceptualise imagesdifferently according to whether they are asked to evaluate the practice representedonly by text; using images induces more moral conceptualisations than text. This demonstrates the utility of the MST and provides theoretical and practical implications for exploring people’sperceptions and educating them on animal welfare.