My Brother Is My Best Friend by Nicole Weaver

It is possible that the social psychological helping literature may help shed light on the question of human-animal helping, and may provide some ways to investigate this issue. While considerable research has been carried out to understand helping offered to other humans, relatively little research has focused specifically on the motivations underlying helping for animals.

Females were found to be more likely to save their pets over non-immediate family members than males (all ps < 0.05), suggesting that males and females may differ in the structure of their moral reasoning. The results suggest that pets are often viewed as psychological-kin. Participants were also more likely to save their own pet over a human life than someone else’s pet over a human life. Willingness to save a pet over a human consistently decreased as level of relationship between the participant and the human in the scenario increased. The level of relationship between the human shifted six times (foreign tourist, hometown stranger, distant cousin, best friend, grandparent, and sibling), while relationship to the pet had two levels (your pet, someone else’s pet). To save humans or pets from imminent death. Participants (n = 573) were given moral dilemmas and forced to decide whether The past research on moral decision-making, the current study presented a novel approach to exploring moral decision-making by forcing participants to choose to save the life between biological family and psychological-kin. Oftentimes, people consider their pets as part of their family. Family selection may help explain moral judgments. However, when further probed about their decisions, moral dumbfounding often occurs.

Past research has shown that when presented with personal dilemmas, individuals showed greater brain activity in the hot system areas.

Neuroscientific studies indicate moral cognition involves a cognitive struggle between two systems in the brain: the emotional “hot” system and the rational “cold” system.

My Brother Is My Best Friend by Nicole Weaver