Assessment of human relationships with other animal species.

Few works explore the assessments that laypeople make about practices that involve animals. This study tests the multiple sorting tasks (MST) as a method to explore perceptions of animals. 115 people of different genders, and age groups, and the condition of owning a pet or not, assessed practices that make use of animals. The inquiry was made through an interview based on a conceptualisation of the free sortings of 18 cards with text and 18 images that contain practices involving animals, and whether the condition of having a pet or not influenced their conceptualisations. A multidimensional scaling analysis (MSA), indicates that people classify the practices based on the function animals have for society, however are worried about the conditions in which animals are used. The results discuss the importance that laypeople give to the ethics of animal uses, and the role of having a pet or not, showing that young people are more sensitive to the welfare of animals. The results conclude that the participants conceptualise images differently according to whether they are asked to evaluate the practice represented only by text; using images induces more moral conceptualisations than text. This demonstrates the utility of the MST and provides theoretical and practical implications for exploring people's perceptions and educating them on animal welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]