Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité, (UMR 7205 Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, CNRS UPMC EPHE, Sorbonne Universités), CP30, 25 rue Cuvier 75005, Paris, France.
ISEM, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France.
Sci Rep. 2019 Dec 20;9(1):19555. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-56006-9.
Currently the planet is inhabited by several millions of extremely diversified species. Not all of them arouse emotions of the same nature or intensity in humans. Little is known about the extent of our affective responses toward them and the factors that may explain these differences. Our online survey involved 3500 raters who had to make choices depending on specific questions designed to either assess their empathic perceptions or their compassionate reactions toward an extended photographic sampling of organisms. Results show a strong negative correlation between empathy scores and the divergence time separating them from us. However, beyond a certain time of divergence, our empathic perceptions stabilize at a minimum level. Compassion scores, although based on less spontaneous choices, remain strongly correlated to empathy scores and time of divergence. The mosaic of features characterizing humans has been acquired gradually over the course of the evolution, and the phylogenetically closer a species is to us, the more it shares common traits with us. Our results could be explained by the fact that many of these traits may arouse sensory biases. These anthropomorphic signals could be able to mobilize cognitive circuitry and to trigger prosocial behaviors usually at work in human relationships.
目前，这个星球上生活着数百万种极其多样化的物种。并非所有物种都能引起人类相同性质或强度的情感。我们对人类对它们的情感反应的程度以及可能解释这些差异的因素知之甚少。我们的在线调查涉及 3500 名评分者，他们必须根据特定的问题做出选择，这些问题旨在评估他们对生物体扩展摄影样本的同理心感知或同情反应。结果表明，同理心得分与它们与我们的分离时间之间存在很强的负相关关系。然而，超过一定的分离时间后，我们的同理心感知会稳定在一个最低水平。尽管基于不太自发的选择，同情分数仍然与同理心分数和分离时间密切相关。人类特征的镶嵌模式是在进化过程中逐渐获得的，与我们亲缘关系越近的物种，与我们共有的特征就越多。我们的结果可以用这样一个事实来解释，即这些特征中的许多特征可能会引起感官偏差。这些拟人化的信号能够调动认知电路，并引发通常在人际关系中起作用的亲社会行为。
