PAPERS & ARTICLES_

Veterinary education and students' attitudestowards animal welfare

E. S. PAUL, A. L. PODBERSCEK

Veterinary students at two British universities in their first preclinical, first clinical and final years of study,completed questionnaires designed to assess their attitudes towards the welfare of animals. These attitudeswere divided into their two constituent components: emotional (emotional empathy with animals) andcognitive (belief in the sentience of animals). Analyses of variance revealed that the year of study wassignificantly related to the perceived sentience of dogs, cats and cows, with students in their later years of studyrating them as having lower levels of sentience. The female students rated themselves as having significantlyhigher levels of emotional empathy with animals than did the male students. There was also a significantinteraction between sex and year of study, the female students maintaining relatively high levels of empathythroughout the three years, whereas the male students showed lower levels of empathy in their later years.

Veterinary Record (2000)146, 269-272

E. S. Paul, BSc, PhD,Department ofPsychology, University ofEdinburgh, 7 GeorgeSquare, EdinburghEH8 9JZA. L. Podberscek, BVSc,PhD, Department ofClinical VeterinaryMedicine, University ofCambridge, MadingleyRoad, Cambridge CB3 OES

Dr Paul's present addressis Division of AnimalHealth and Husbandry,Department of ClinicalVeterinary Science,University of Bristol,Langford House,Langford, Bristol BS18 7DY

CONCERN for the welfare of animals is central to the roleof the practising veterinarian. When British veterinary grad-uates are admitted to the Royal College of VeterinarySurgeons, they make a pledge that it will be their 'constantendeavour to ensure the welfare of animals committed totheir care' But veterinary practice occupies a difficult andcomplex moral position, because it serves both animal andhuman interests (Tannenbaum 1993). Difficult ethical deci-sions are commonplace as vets try to ensure the welfare oftheir patients while at the same time accommodating oftenstrict economic constraints and the owners' expectations ordemands. Examples of conflict abound: the sick animal whosemonetary value is less than the cost of the drug it needs; theowner who presses for continuing and potentially painfulintervention for a dying pet; the owner who demandseuthanasia for a completely healthy animal (Herzog and oth-ers 1989, Fogle and Abrahamson 1990).

Veterinary education has been characterised not just as aneducational exercise, but as a rite of passage, by which naiveschool leavers are transformed into professional men andwomen who have learned to cope with such conflicts (Arluke1997), and with other emotionally difficult aspects of veteri-nary work, such as the visceral upset induced by witnessingunpleasant surgeries, or the guilt and distress felt when the lifeof an animal could not be saved (Herzog and others 1989).It has been argued by sociologists that medical studentsundergo a process of hardening, adopting a more detachedattitude towards their patients and the work they are learningto do, in order to cope with the distress and conflict theyinevitably encounter (Smith and Kleinman 1989, Arluke andHafferty 1996). The aim of this study was to investigatewhether such changes of attitude may affect veterinary stu-dents, and if so, to identify the nature of the changes.

Studies by O'Farrell (1990) in Britain, and Blackshaw andBlackshaw (1993) in Australia, both found that veterinarystudents viewed qualified vets as generally'tough-minded',and pet owners as generally emotional and'tender-minded'in their attitudes towards animals. The students themselvesappeared to become increasingly like tough-minded vets, asthey progressed through their course. O'Farrell (1990) raisedthis change as a possible cause for concern, pointing out thatit is important, especially in small animal practice, for vets tobe sensitive to the emotional nature of the pet-owner rela-tionship. Becoming too tough-minded or detached in one'sapproach to animals may also have implications for qualifiedvets' capacity to uphold their promise to 'ensure the welfareof animals' the danger being that a detached vet may be lessconcerned about a patient's wellbeing.

Social psychologists have traditionally found it both prac-tically and theoretically valuable to divide people's self-

reported attitudes into separate 'cognitive' and 'emotional'domains (Allport 1935, Eagly and Chaiken 1993) - that is,one's emotional reactions to an event or issue, and one'sbeliefs about it, are thought of as independent psychologicalprocesses which, although often linked or correlated, may wellhave different sources of variation and may also result in dif-ferent behavioural outcomes. With particular respect to peo-ple's widely varying attitudes towards the welfare of animals,arguably the most important measure of the cognitivedomain concerns beliefs about animals' sentience, theircapacities to feel and thus, potentially, to suffer (Hills 1995,Dennet 1996). Within the emotional domain, it is the ten-dency to empathise with animals, to feel an emotional reac-tion oneself when witnessing an animal's distress, which isconsidered crucial (Eisenberg 1988, Hills 1995). The presentstudy was therefore designed to measure veterinary students'empathy with animals and their beliefs concerning the sen-tience of animals. The measurements were made at threepoints during their courses; the first preclinical year, the firstclinical year and the final year. It was hypothesised that if ahardening of attitude occurs or the students became moredetached during the course, they would show lower levels ofanimal-oriented empathy and/or attribute lower levels ofsentience to a variety of animals in the later years than in theearlier parts of the course.

It is also possible that male and female veterinary studentsmay differ in the nature or magnitude of the changes in atti-tude that they undergo during their education. NeitherO'Farrell (1990) nor Blackshaw and Blackshaw (1993) com-pared the attitudes ofmen and women towards animals dur-ing veterinary training, but on the basis of personalexperience, Lawrence (1997) postulated that there may beimportant differences. Recent studies among non-veterinar-ians have indicated that, in general, females have moreempathic feelings for animals (Kellert and Berry 1987, Hills1993) and greater concerns about their welfare (Herzog andothers 1991, Furnham and Heyes 1993) than males. It is there-fore possible that when female students enter veterinary edu-cation they also may show greater empathy with animals, orbelieve them to have higher levels of sentience, than male stu-dents, and that by the end of their course the two groups maybe either more or less like one another in their attitudestowards animals. It is important to know this, not leastbecause the proportion ofmen and women in veterinary edu-cation is changing rapidly. In 1966, 17-7 per cent of new vet-erinary students were female, compared with 69-8 per centin 1996 (Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons 1968, 1998).Any differences in attitude between male and female vets maytherefore have serious consequences for the ethos of the vet-erinary profession.

The Veterinary Record, March 4, 2000 269

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Finally, the work ofArluke (1988) in animal research labo-ratories, has demonstrated that the attitudes ofpeople towardsanimals, and their behaviour towards them, can be greatlyaffected by the subculture in which they work. It was thereforealso of interest to determine whether the university at whichthe students studied was related to the attitudes they reported.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Participants and procedureStudents of veterinary medicine at two British universitiesparticipated in the study. For the purposes of confidential-ity, these universities are referred to as 'university A' and 'uni-versity B. Three year-groups were questioned: first-yearpreclinical, first-year clinical and final-year students.Questionnaires were circulated to the students either duringlectures (preclinical students) or via their individual depart-mental pigeon holes (clinical students) during the winterterm of 1995. Each student was asked to complete the ques-tionnaire anonymously, and return it as soon as possible to amail box in their veterinary department's general office.

QuestionnaireThe first part of the questionnaire was designed to obtainbasic background information about the students and theircourses, including their age, sex and year of study, and con-tained some additional questions about the students' previ-ous experiences with animals and their professionalambitions in veterinary medicine. The rest of the question-naire was divided into two sections: beliefs about the sen-tience of animals, and empathy with animals.

Beliefs about the sentience of animals A sentient being isone that has the capacity to feel (Pearsall 1998). The capacityfor sentience that an animal possesses can therefore be regardedas its ability to experience a range of sensations, perceptionsand emotions. Although sentience cannot be measureddirectly, people's beliefs about the relative sentience of differ-ent species ofanimal can be assessed. The questionnaire poseda series of questions concerning the students' beliefs about thecapacity ofeach offour familiar, domestic animal species (dogs,cats, pigs and cows) to feel the sensations of hunger and pain,and the emotions of fear and boredom. These sensations andemotions were chosen to provide a brief but representativeassessment ofthe students' beliefs about the animals' capacitiesto feel the wide range of apparent emotions and sensationslikely to be witnessed within veterinary practice. A visual-ana-logue type scale (Osgood and others 1957) was used to assessthe responses, with students being required to mark a cross atan appropriate place on the response line. For example:Do you think that most cats can feel the sensation of pain?Yes, in a very similarway to people - x- No, not at allScores for each emotion or sensation for each species wereobtained by measuring (in mm) the distance between the cen-tre of the cross and the left end of the response line. Thisprocess yielded sensation/emotion scores for hunger, pain,fear and boredom for each ofthe four species. Total sentiencescores for each species were also calculated as the sum of thefour sensation/emotion scores.

Empathy with animals Empathy is the capacity or tendencyto experience a vicarious emotional response to another'semotions or states (Eisenberg 1995). In the questionnaire, thestudents' empathy with animals was measured by using a 28-item version of the Animal Empathy Scale (E. S. Paul, unpub-lished observations). This scale was developed from theMehrabian and Epstein (1972) 'Questionnaire Measure of

Emotional Empathy', a scale commonly used for the mea-surement of people's empathy with other people. The AnimalEmpathy Scale consists of 28 statements concerning animalswhich suggest either empathic or unempathic sentiments, forexample,'It upsets me to see animals being chased and killedby lions in wildlife programmes on TV, 'Pets have a great influ-ence on my moods, 'People often make too much of the feel-ings and sensitivities of animals' The students were requiredto respond to each statement in terms of a nine-point, Likert-type scale, ranging from 'Agree very strongly' to 'Disagree verystrongly', with agreements with empathic statements scoringhigh (maximum 9) and agreements with unempathic state-ments scoring low (minimum 0). The total Animal EmpathyScale scores were calculated as the sum of the 28 responses.

Statistical analysesAnalyses of variance were used to assess the effects of year ofstudy, sex and university of study on the students' AnimalEmpathy Scale scores, and on their ratings of the sentienceof dogs, cats, cows and pigs.

RESULTS

A total of 319 veterinary students were recruited to take partin the study; 62-1 per cent of the sample were from univer-sity B and 37-9 per cent were from university A, and 60X0 percent ofthe participants were female, reflecting the higher pro-portion of female students studying at these veterinaryschools. First-year preclinical students constituted 43.8 percent of the sample, first-year clinical students a further 29-2per cent, and final-year clinical students made up the remain-ing 27-0 per cent of the sample.

Animal sentienceTable 1 shows the results ofthe analyses ofvariance ofthe stu-dents' beliefs about the sentience of dogs, cats, cows and pigs.

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The Veterinary Record, March 4, 2000

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PAPERS & ARTICLES

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The year of studywas significantly related to the total sentiencescores attributed to dogs, cats and cows, but not to pigs. Thisfinding was largely accounted for by the generally lower lev-els of sentience attributed to animals by students in their clin-ical years, compared with students in their first pre-clinicalyear. When the scores for individual sensations or emotionsare considered for each species, it is clear that the emotion ofboredom was the one which differed most across the threeyears studied (Table 1). The capacities of dogs, cats and cows

to feel bored were perceived to be considerably higher by thefirst preclinical year students than by the clinical students.

The university at which students were undergoing theireducation was also significantly related to the perceived sen-

tience of certain animals. Students studying at university Bwere more likely to rate cows and pigs (but not dogs and cats)as having a greater capacity to feel the sensation of hunger(Table 1). This contributed to university B students giving sig-nificantly higher scores for total sentience to cows than diduniversityA students, although a similar trend in their ratingsof the total sentience of pigs did not reach significance.

The sex of the students was related to their ratings of theanimals' capacities to feel pain, with the female studentsregarding both cats and cows as more likely to feel pain thandid the male students (Table 1). There were also significantinteractions between the students' sex and university of studyin the ratings given to all four species' perceived capacity tofeel hunger: men at university A were more likely to rate dogsand cats as having a greater capacity to feel hunger, andwomen at university B were more likely to rate pigs and cows

as having a greater capacity to feel hunger.

Empathy with animalsYear of study was not significantly related to the students' self-reported empathy with animals. Female students showed sig-nificantly more empathy than male students (P<0OOO1) andthere was also a significant interaction between sex and yearof study (P<0 05), with female students maintaining similarlevels of empathy throughout the three years, while the empa-thy displayed by male students declined in each successiveyear and particularly in the final clinical year (Fig 1). Therewas no significant difference between the levels of empathyshown by students at the two universities.

DISCUSSION

This was a cross-sectional study rather than a longitudinalinvestigation, so it cannot be claimed that the differences

observed in the attitudes ofthe students in different years werenecessarily the result of changes in the views of individual stu-dents. Nevertheless, the data are consistent with the hypothe-sis that a degree ofhardening or detachment takes place duringveterinary education. They are also in keeping with the find-ings of O'Farrell (1990), and Blackshaw and Blackshaw (1993),that students in the latter part of their veterinary course per-ceive themselves to be less like sentimental pet owners andmore like'tough-minded' vets. However, the study also offersinsights into the nature ofthe differences in attitude shown bystudents at different points in their education.

The cognitive component of the students' attitudestowards animals, their beliefs concerning animal sentience,were strongly associated with the year of study, with the levelof sentience attributed to dogs, cats and cows all tending to belower during the later years of the course. It appears, there-fore, that as the course proceeds, students tend to see someanimals in more Cartesian terms, as machine-like and havingless capacity for consciousness (Lawrence 1997). Arluke(1988) has suggested that older students may be 'counter-anthropomorphising' animals, possibly as a way of copingwith the moral conflict and emotional distress they expect toencounter in veterinary work (Herzog and others 1989). Ofthe four emotions and sensations measured, the animals'capacity to suffer boredom was most likely to be consideredto be lower by students during the later years of the course,suggesting that it may be the more complex, subtle qualitiesof animals' capacities for sentience that the students may bechanging their opinions about, rather than basic feelings suchas pain, hunger and fear. This is, to some extent, reassuring,because it suggests that it is unnecessary to be concernedabout the possibility that veterinary education somehowblunts students' beliefs in those aspects of an animals' sen-tience, for example, sensitivity to hunger and pain, which arefundamental to its capacity to suffer and, thus, to its welfare.Nevertheless, the belief that an animal has the capacity toexperience complex feelings such as boredom may also haveconsequences for its welfare, especially when judgements arebeing made about species which are commonly kept in hous-ing systems which prevent them performing the full reper-toire of their normal behaviour.

Although the year of study was not related to the students'levels ofempathy (the emotional component oftheir attitudestowards animals) there was a significant interaction betweenthe sex of the students and the year of study in the levels ofempathy reported. Fig 1 shows that the empathy scores of thefemale students did not differ considerably across the threeyears, but that the mean score of the final year male studentswas approximately 18 points lower than that of the first pre-clinical year males, representing a difference ofover 15 per centof total male variance in Animal Empathy Scale scores.

Lawrence (1997) reported that denying and dismissingemotional concern for animals was a constituent part of theprocess of becoming a veterinary surgeon in the USA in the1950s, when the profession was almost exclusively male. Sincethen, there has been a large increase in the proportion ofwomen studying veterinary medicine in Britain (Royal Collegeof Veterinary Surgeons 1968, 1998) and the USA (Hart andMelese d'Hospital 1989, Lawrence 1997). Nevertheless, veteri-nary school teaching staff are still predominantly male, so thestereotype presented to new students ofwhat a veterinary sur-geon should be like (O'Farrell 1990) is probably still a largelymasculine one. Feminist writers have argued that women'sviews of animals are more caring, affectionate and egalitarianthan those of men (Adams 1994), an opinion which is sup-ported to some extent by empirical data from a number ofpsy-chological studies which consistently show that women havegreater concern for the welfare of animals (Herzog and oth-ers 1991, Furnham and Heyes 1993) and greater emotionalempathy with animals (Kellert and Berry 1987, Hills 1993).

The Veterinary Record, March 4, 2000

FIG 1: Mean AnimalEmpathy Scale scores offemale and malestudents in their firstpreclinical, first clinicaland final years of study(start and end points ofY axis represent 5th and95th percentile pointsof total score variance)

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In this study, the men and women veterinary students dif-fered little in their estimates of animals' capacities for sen-

tience. Of the four animals considered, differences were onlyfound between male and female judgements about the capac-ity of cows and cats to feel pain, with women showing a

slightly but significantly greater tendency to consider them tohave a more human-like capacity to feel pain. This findingdeserves more study, because judgements about sensitivityto pain are integral to the use of analgesia and anaesthesia inveterinary practice (Phillips 1993). However, the differencehad little effect on the total sentience scores allotted to ani-mals by the male and female students, because both tended torate all four species as having a relatively high capacity toexperience pain.

Hart and Melese d'Hospital (1989) have suggested that,unlike men and women in the general population, male andfemale veterinary students may converge in their attitudestowards animals as they progress through their course. Thismay be the case with respect to the cognitive components ofsuch attitudes, possibly as a result of the masculine, tough-minded ethos still pervading the profession, but it did notoccur in relation to the emotional components of the stu-dents' attitudes to animals. The men and women differed intheir self-reports ofemotional empathy with animals, partic-ularly towards the end of the course, when the male students'empathy scores were about 12 per cent lower than those ofthefemales (Fig 1). If this finding does indicate that the male stu-dents' empathy with animals declined during veterinary edu-cation, it seems that for some reason the female students wereeither unable or unwilling to undergo a similar change.Whether this might affect the ability of women vets to copewith the emotional stresses and moral conflicts inherent inveterinary practice remains to be investigated. Such researchwill be important because it is clear that as the number ofwomen entering the veterinary profession increases (RoyalCollege ofVeterinary Surgeons 1968, 1998), a more feminine,empathic attitude towards animals is likely to become pre-dominant in veterinary practice (Lawrence 1997).

In a study of animal research facilities in the USA, Arluke(1988) found that attitudes towards the treatment of animalsvaried widely from one laboratory to another, and he sug-gested that the subcultures of each laboratory could be influ-encing the attitudes of their members of staff. It is possiblethat the different schools might represent subcultures inwhich distinct attitudes could be transmitted to their stu-dents. In this study, there was little evidence of differences inattitude between students from the two veterinary schools.One exception was the finding that, compared with those atuniversity A, the students at university B were more likely torate pigs, and particularly cows, as having a greater capacityto feel the sensation of hunger. There is no obvious explana-tion for this difference, but the finding does suggest that ifthere are subcultural differences between universities in theattitudes that pervade the students, they may have specificrather than broad-ranging effects.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study was supported by a grant to Elizabeth S. Paul fromthe Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.The authors are grateful to the staff at the two veterinaryschools for generously allowing them to conduct the research,and to the many students who took time to complete thequestionnaires.

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ReferencesADAMS, C. J. (1994) Neither Man Nor Beast: Feminism and the Defense ofAnimals. New York, Continuum. pp 166-185

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