Why Are People More Empathetic Towards Animals and Fictional Characters than Actual People?
Whenever you’re watching a movie or TV show, and something bad happens to an animal or a fictional character, you usually feel bad for said animal or fictional character and wish them the best. However, when you watching something bad happening to a real person, you’re usually laughing at them, especially when you think they deserved it. How come?
Why do we feel bad when something horrible happens to animals and fictional characters, but we laugh when something bad happens to a real human? If we’re supposed to have empathy, shouldn’t we have empathy for all humans just like we do for animals and fiction characters?
For animals, it’s easy to see why we feel bad for them when something bad happens to them. They don’t have the comprehension levels we humans have when it comes to consequences. Yeah, animals may be more humans than we give credit, but they’re still not humans. While they may understand right from wrong, they don’t have the comprehension skills to fully understand the consequences of their actions like we humans do.
I’ll bring up a story I’ve previously mentioned here — the one about the Pitbull named Daisy. Daisy had come from an abusive home; because of this, she was afraid of men and yelling and would tear up walls if she was stressed or afraid. One night, the night of my sister’s high school graduation, Daisy was left all alone in the house. Of course, she was afraid and started tearing the walls up in a panic. When they got back, my stepmother freaked out at the torn walls and beat Daisy so badly that she ended up with a bloody nose.
Of course, what Daisy did was wrong. She shouldn’t have torn up the walls, and it’s okay to discipline her for that. But beating her to the point of having a bloody nose isn’t discipline — it’s abuse. On average, dogs have a cognitive level around the same level as a three-or-five-year-old human child. That’s usually the age when a child starts understanding the world around them.
Like children of those ages, dogs feel simple emotions like love, joy, excitement, anger, jealousy, pain, and fear. They don’t, however, feel more complex emotions like guilt or shame… at least, not generally. Those emotions require more conscious thought — thoughts that older humans possess. Daisy may have felt guilt and shame after tearing up those walls, but, more likely, she was fearing punishment — a punishment that was way too harsh for a dog that experienced the things she had.
I bring all of this up because, like me, you probably feel awful for the beating Daisy had gotten despite the fact that this happened almost a decade ago. Since dogs don’t have the same comprehension skills as an adult human, it’s safe to say that we feel bad for them because we don’t think they deserve the bad thing they’ve gotten.
The same can especially be said for fictional animals. How many of you have cried when Old Yeller got shot for having rabies? How many of you were horrified while watching Watership Down? We feel bad for these animals not only because of what I’ve said above, but also because they’re fictional characters. In these stories, you’re supposed to feel sad when Old Yeller gets shot, and you’re supposed to be horrified when the rabbits are killed off in Watership Down. That’s how good storytelling is supposed to work, after all.
What about fictional humans? How come people feel awful for Harry Potter because of his abusive upbringing? Why do we cheer when Matilda gets adopted by that nice teacher Miss Honey and gets away from her abusive parents? Well, the characters I’ve mentioned are the protagonists (and title characters) of their respected franchises. Naturally, we’re supposed to root for them, and we do in these two cases.
That’s because we’re meant to see ourselves in their situations, and we do. In our lives, we’re the protagonists, meaning we’re kind of like our own version of God. And, as the protagonists of our lives, we see ourselves as Harry Potter and Matilda and root for them when they get out of their terrible situations and come out on top. We cheer when Harry defeats Voldemort or when Matilda defeats Miss Trunchbull because we want to be the heroes of our own stories.
That’s probably the reason why we don’t feel as much empathy towards the antagonist or other real people — they’re not the hero, and they’re not us. In a story, you usually get multiple perspectives — the protagonist’s, the antagonist’s, and maybe the side characters’. We don’t get that luxury with other real people. It’s why we laugh at cringe compilations of people making fools of themselves on YouTube. It’s why we yell and curse when someone doesn’t watch where they’re going while driving. It’s why we make jokes about certain people.
However, when someone makes fun of us or criticizes us for doing something, we get defensive about it. We make up a million explanations and excuses as to why we do the things we do. “We’ve had a long day.” “We’re stressed out.” “We didn’t notice. It was an accident.” Yet, we usually don’t consider the reasons why anyone else messes up. They’re not the protagonists of our lives; we are. This is our story, not theirs! Why should we care about anyone else? That’s selfish thinking, but we’re all instinctively selfish beings. It’s a part of human nature.
We tend to not care about other real humans because, unlike other animals, humans have the ability to feel shame and remorse and change for the better. Despite my selfishness and my other “undesirable” personality traits, I do have an ability to feel some empathy, and I know you do, too. That’s what separates us from most other animals, and that’s probably the reason why we’re more likely to call someone out when they mess up or do something we don’t like. Real humans can change drastically; animals and fictional characters cannot.
I guess that’s why we empathize so much with animals and fictional characters. Despite the fact that we, too, are real humans just like the ones we laugh at or criticize, we often don’t notice the changes we’ve made to ourselves. Despite only being in our perspectives, we don’t notice when we’ve changed for the better or for the worse most of the time. We’re so focused on ourselves that we don’t notice anyone else. However, we do notice changes in other real humans — even the most subtle. And we either applaud or chastise them for said changes.
This is probably why we’re more empathetic towards animals and fictional characters than we are towards other real humans. We may see ourselves in fictional characters, and we may even feel sorry for the animals. But the actual humans we pass by and interact with are people with their own perspectives, too. Maybe it’s time for us to recognize that.
