Summary: Empathy, the profound ability to share and understand the internal emotional states of others, is frequently championed as the ultimate psychological glue that holds human society together, making our everyday interactions personal, supportive, and human. Traditionally, this trait has been viewed as a uniquely sophisticated human quality that definitively separates us from all other animal species.
But is that classical barrier actually scientific, or just human hubris? While dog owners instinctively argue their pets are empathetic, many dismiss this as anthropomorphism—ascribing human traits to animals. We do not extend the same benefit of the doubt to rats, which we associate with carrying diseases. So how can we scientifically determine, without bias, whether other species are empathetic?
A pioneering systematic study answered this by replacing the binary “yes/no” question of animal empathy with five distinct behavioral dimensions. The resulting audit confirms that rats display flexible, other-oriented, and remarkably complex behavior that qualifies as a case of empathy, even if it lacks the mental state mapping seen in humans.
Key Facts
- The Landmark 2011 “Science” Cage Study: The research builds on a famous 2011 behavioral experiment where a free rat, when confronted with both chocolate and a cagemate locked in a small, narrow prison, prioritized freeing the trapped rat first. Only after freeing its friend did the rat share the chocolate.
- Rejecting Pure Instinct: The Newen team’s multidimensional audit first ruled out that this was just innate, reflexive instinct. The evidence shows rats only perform this helping behavior for friends they know well, not for strangers they have never met, proving it is a targeted social response.
- The 5 Dimensions of Empathy: To build a rigorous scientific measurement, the team created five distinct dimensions that collectively define empathetic behavior:
- Registering Emotion: Recognizing the other’s basic emotional state.
- Registering Situation: Understanding the immediate physical predicament of the other.
- Registering Mental States: Perceiving the other’s intentions, beliefs, or (further) mental processes beyond immediate emotion.
- Behavioral Flexibility: Displaying helping behavior that is adaptable, not instinctive or rigid.
- Other-Oriented: The behavior must be geared specifically toward helping the other agent, not for personal benefit.
- The Rat Profile Audit: When systematically mapped against these five points, rats show:
- Moderately High: Flexibility and Situation/Emotion Registration.
- Moderate: Other-Oriented (the behavior is targeted, but based on a limited emotional map).
- Almost Non-Existent: Mental State Registration (beyond immediate distress).
- The Final Verdict: Rat altruism is definitively a case of empathy, because their helping behavior is flexible and directed toward the other. However, it is not the same type of empathy as seen in humans, largely because rats fail to perceive the more sophisticated mental and intentional states of their social partners.
- A Gradgrad understanding: Professor Newen emphasizes that the breakthrough is that we no longer have to guess. We can now precisely define exactly which profile of empathy different species possess on a gradual scale, replacing philosophical dogma with data.
Source: RUB
Empathy is the glue that holds our society together and makes our everyday lives personal and human. Is it not therefore a good candidate for a trait that separates humans from other animals? Are there any other animal species that show empathy?
“Of course,” says the dog owner. “However, it is crucial to note that people ascribe human traits to their pets’ behaviors, and so they see empathy in their animals,” explains Newen.
Rats, however, can transfer harmful diseases to humans. Do we thus immediately assume that they are not empathetic? How can we scientifically determine, without any prejudices if possible, whether animals can behave empathetically and which species have the capacity for this?
Testing behaviors
The researchers drew on behavioral observations to answer these questions. In one study published in the magazine Science in 2011, two rats lived in a large cage, belonged to the same group, and knew one another well. One of the two rats was locked in a small, narrow cage where it could barely move and that could only be opened from the outside.
The other rat was hungry and was left to move around freely near the caged rat. It saw chocolate on one side and its fellow rat in the cage on the other. What did the free rat do? It first freed the rat from the cage and then shared the chocolate.
“What more could one do to show that empathy is at play here?” asks co-author Maja Griem.
While one group of animal researchers celebrated this finding as fully formed empathy, others remained skeptical and denied this, claiming that empathy is a deeply human emotion. Albert Newen’s team wanted to resolve this dilemma.
Creating multidimensional profiles of empathy
To do this, the researchers created multidimensional profiles of empathy. First, they ruled out that this was just an innate instinctual behavior: Rats only help rats that they are friends with, but not those they have never met before.
When it comes to empathy, providing aid cannot occur randomly, but rather presupposes that sensing the other takes place in three dimensions, namely by registering the other’s emotion, situation, and (further) mental states. The behavior should also be based on this registering of information and occur flexibly, not instinctively. One should not help another for personal benefit, but because it is geared toward the other.
“Overall, we have five dimensions of capabilities that are closely linked with empathy,” explains Newen. “Registering the other party’s emotions, situation, and mental state, as well as the two behavioral characteristics – namely, that the behavior is flexible and directed toward the other agent.”
Comparing different animal species
The research team examined these five dimensions more closely and determined how distinct they are among various animal species. They compared these using past behavioral studies of great apes, rats (and mice), dogs (and wolves), and corvids.
“This allows us to compare these empathy profiles amongst each other and with us humans,” explains co-author and chimpanzee researcher Simone Pika from Osnabrück.
The results: Rats possess the first two capabilities (registering emotion and situation) to a moderate degree, while there is almost no registration of mental states (other than the central emotion). The dimension of flexibility is strongly apparent in rats, but they are only moderately able to orient their behavior on the basis of others.
“Put simply, one can say that rats’ remarkable helping behavior is a case of empathy,” says Newen, “but it is not the same type of empathy as seen in humans, especially because there is a lack of sensitivity to the other’s mental state beyond the registration of emotion.”
“We now no longer have to provide a yes/no response to the question of whether rats feel empathy. We can more precisely determine which type or profile of empathy they have in a gradual understanding,” says Newen.
Key Questions Answered:
A: This is exactly the skeptical question that the classic 2011 “Science” experiment addressed. In that study, the free rat wasn’t just given a button that opened the cage; it was presented with a massive conflict: chocolate. The rat was hungry. If the free rat was simply curious about the cage, it would have first eaten all the chocolate and then potentially fiddled with the locked cage. Instead, the rat actively chose to prioritize its cagemate over its favorite treat. It used its flexibility to free the other rat first, and then, only after its friend was free, did it return to share the chocolate. This proactive sequence proves the other rat’s distress was the core driver.
A: The main scientific difference lies in complexity. Rats possess the core behavioral engine of empathy: they can register distress and act flexibly to fix it for another familiar rat. But they lack the sophisticated cognitive map that humans possess. A rat can understand that its friend is trapped and distressed, but it cannot register that its friend might also be “feeling embarrassed,” “planning an escape,” or “holding a belief about where the food is.” Human empathy integrates those hidden layers. So while a rat’s behavior is definitely empathetic, it’s a “profile” that operates purely on basic emotion and situation, rather than sophisticated mental-state modeling.
A: It’s a massive call to stop using a single human metric to judge entire animal worlds. For centuries, we asked, “Do animals feel like humans do?” and when they didn’t, we assumed the answer was “no.” Dr. Newen’s five-dimensional map proves that empathy isn’t a magical, all-or-nothing human switch. It’s a complex set of capabilities that evolved gradually across different lineages. By mapping these specific profiles, we see that animals like rats possess remarkable social tools, like flexibility and altruism, even if they lack the cognitive architecture for philosophy. This allows us to celebrate and study animal intelligence on its own terms, rather than dismissing it as anthropomorphism.
Editorial Notes:
- This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
- Journal paper reviewed in full.
- Additional context added by our staff.
About this emapthy research news
Author: Meike Driessen
Source: RUB
Contact: Meike Driessen – RUB
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Animal Empathy Reconsidered: A Multidimensional Profile Account” by Albert Newen, Maja Griem, Ludwig Huber, Thomas Bugnyar, Aaron Blaisdell, Simone Pika. Biological Reviews
DOI:10.1002/brv.70196
Abstract
Animal Empathy Reconsidered: A Multidimensional Profile Account
Empathy is the glue that holds societies together and yet several fundamental questions about empathy persist. What is empathy (the definitional question)? Is it uniquely human and, if not, which nonhuman animals possess empathy (the distribution question)? Which type or quality of empathy is realized in different species (the quality question)?
To tackle these three questions, we developed a species-sensitive, multidimensional profile account of empathy. The main function of this account is to enable cross-species comparisons and to capture the rich variety of typical empathetic phenomena.
Therefore, we aim to characterize behaviour-based cognitive profiles of empathy which are built on multifactorial characterizations of the dimensions of empathy and of the features realizing these dimensions. The distribution question can be answered by assessing family resemblances of profiles of empathy to paradigmatic cases of empathy.
Answers to the quality question can be provided with reference to the relevant empathy profile, which allows us to describe and predict associated behaviours. To gain an initial understanding of the feasibility of this framework for interspecies comparisons, we applied it to four groups of animals: rodents, apes, canids and corvids.
Comparing these groups, we demonstrate that each species has a specific empathy profile which has a predictive power: in complex situations requiring empathy, distinct profiles will result in more distinct behavioural responses whereas similar profiles will result in more similar responses, even among phylogenetically distinct groups.
This new multidimensional profile account enables fine-grained comparisons within and between species instead of the prevailing all or nothing perspectives of empathy. Furthermore, it offers the integration of phylogenetic and ontogenetic perspectives thereby providing a crucial tool to explicate the notion of empathy to humans and other animals in a species-sensitive way.
We demonstrate this framework by applying it specifically to empathy, and the framework’s advantages invite it to be generalized to all rich and flexible cognitive abilities in nonhuman animals.
