Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 2008, 49, 269–276 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2008.00636.x

© 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. ISSN 0036-5564.

Blackwell Publishing Ltd Personality and Social Sciences

Free the animals? Investigating attitudes toward animal testing in

Britain and the United States

VIREN SWAMI,1 ADRIAN FURNHAM2 and ANDREW N. CHRISTOPHER3

1Department of Psychology, University of Westminster, UK2Department of Psychology, University College London, UK3Department of Psychology, Albion College, Michigan, USA

Swami, V., Furnham, A. & Christopher, A. N. (2008). Free the animals? Investigating attitudes toward animal testing in Britain and theUnited States. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 49, 269–276.

In this study, 185 British and 143 American undergraduates completed a battery of tests that measured attitudes toward animal testing andvarious individual difference variables. Attitudes toward animal testing factored into two interpretable factors: general attitudes toward animaltesting, and animal welfare and conditions of testing. Overall, there was support for animal testing under the right conditions, although therewas also concern for the welfare of animals and the conditions under which testing takes place. There were small but significant nationaldifference on both factors (with Americans more positive about testing and less positive about animal welfare), and a significant sex differenceon the first factor (women were more negative about testing). Correlation and regression analyses showed that there were few significant individualdifference predictors of both factors. These results are discussed in relation to past and future work on attitudes toward animal testing.

Key words: Animal testing, animal welfare, lay attitudes.

Dr Viren Swami, Department of Psychology, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW. E-mail: virenswami@hotmail.com

INTRODUCTION

Animal testing, or animal research, refers to the use ofanimals in experiments within academic, research, or com-mercial establishments. In Britain alone, it is estimated thatsome 3 million animals – from fruit flies to mice to non-human primates – are used annually in experiments, andmay either be killed or subsequently euthanized (Jha, 2005).Although many scientists support the use of animals inresearch, particularly where it may lead to scientific break-throughs, the topic remains controversial, particularlyamong the general public (e.g., Croce, 2000; Gluck &Kubacki, 1991; Newkirk, 2000; Reusch, 1989).

It is not surprising, therefore, to find that there has beena dramatic rise in the number of empirical studies examininglay attitudes towards animal testing and welfare, beginningin the early 1980s (e.g. Archer, 1986; Armstrong & Hutchins,1996; Coilee & Miller, 1984; Feeney, 1987; Furnham &Heyes, 1993; Furnham, McManus & Scott, 2003; Gallup &Suarez, 1985; Goldsmith, Clark & Laferty, 2006; Gray, 1987;Hagelin, Carlsson & Hau, 2003; Hills, 1993, 1995; Jerol-mack, 2003; Knight, Nunkoosing, Vrij & Cherryman, 2003;Miller, 1985; Plous, 1991, 1996; Vigorito, 1996). To date,however, only a relatively small number of these studies haveexamined the psychological correlates of attitudes towardsanimal testing. This is important because understanding themanner in which attitudes towards animal testing areformed and disseminated will likely have an impact on widerpublic policy on animal welfare and animal rights activism.

In an early study, Furnham and Pinder (1990) found thatBritish undergraduates were strongly opposed to animaltesting and in favor of stricter controls on laboratoriesengaged in animal experimentation. Moreover, this studyfound that women more than men, left-wing more thanright-wing individuals, and vegetarians more than non-vegetarians were more strongly against animal testing. Anextension by Furnham and Heyes (1993) also found similarresults in relation to sex, political orientation and vegetari-anism. In addition, less religious individuals, and cat- anddog-lovers were more anti-animal testing (see also Galvin,Colleg & Herzog, 1998).

More recent studies have suggested that attitudes towardsanimal testing may vary as a function of education or fieldof study. For instance, Vigorito (1996) found that juniorpsychology students had more negative views about animalrights issues than senior undergraduates. On the other hand,Martasian and Goldstein (1997) found that students’ beliefsabout animal welfare varied with their field of study, withmore negative attitudes towards animal testing amongundergraduates involved in animal research. Yet otherstudies have shown that specific factors like empathy andbeliefs about the mental experience of animals are related toattitudes about animal testing (e.g., Furnham et al., 2003;Hills, 1993, 1995; Hills & Lalich, 1998).

A small number of studies have also examined personalitycorrelates of attitudes toward animal testing. One study reportedthat those in favour of animal testing tended to be extra-verted, thinking types who were also masculine, conservative

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and less emphatic (Broida, Tingley, Kimball & Miele, 1993).Mathews and Herzog (1997), on the other hand, found onlyweak associations between personality variables and attitudestoward animal testing: in general, tender-minded and imag-inative individuals were more sympathetic of animal welfare.More recently, Furnham et al. (2003) found that the Big Fivepersonality facet of Agreeableness – associated with compassion,altruism and tender-mindedness – was a good predictor ofnegative attitudes towards animal testing. On a different note,Goldsmith et al. (2006) reported that higher levels of anti-conformity were associated with opposition to animal testing.

This brief review of the empirical literature on attitudestoward animal testing suggests that there are a number ofdemographic and psychological correlates of such attitudes.However, it is possible to further extend earlier studies withthe inclusion of scales measuring psychological variables notpreviously examined. To this end, the present study soughtto examine both demographic (sex, age, religiosity, andpolitical activism) and personality (as measured by the BigFive personality facets) correlates of attitudes toward animaltesting. In addition, the present study tested whetheradditional variables were correlated with such attitudes,including typical intellectual engagement, just world beliefs,authoritarianism, political alienation, and self-control. Toour knowledge, the association of these psychologicalvariables with attitudes toward animal testing have not beenpreviously investigated. It should be pointed out that theselection of a number of these measures was exploratory,although it is based on both intuitive and empirical sense (cf.Goldsmith et al., 2006).

The present study also extends previous work by examiningattitudes toward animal testing in two nations. Previousstudies of this kind are characterized by a focus on asingle-nation, which limits the extent to which results can begeneralized. In the present study, therefore, we examinedattitudes toward animal testing among British and Americanundergraduates, thus introducing a novel cross-nation elementto this investigation. Although it may be supposed that Britishand American participants would be relatively homogenousin their attitudes, this is not necessarily the case. Someanecdotal evidence would suggest that animal rights activismand animal welfare is more highly developed in NorthAmerica than in Britain (Newkirk, 2000), which might leadto the prediction that attitudes toward animal testing wouldbe more negative in the former site. In short, the aim of thepresent study was to examine the association of variousdemographic and psychological variables with attitudestoward animal testing in Britain and the United States.

METHODS

Participants

Two groups of participants were recruited from Britain and theUnited States (n = 328). The British group consisted of 117 men and

68 women (age M = 20.15, SD = 4.89), all of whom were under-graduates from different university disciplines, but enrolled in anintroductory open course in psychology. On a nine-point scale (1 =Not at all, 9 = Very religious), this sample reported a mean religiosityrating of 4.15 (SD = 2.69) and mean political activism rating of 4.28(SD = 2.05). The American sample comprised 40 women and 103men, with a mean age of 18.79 (SD = 0.99), recruited from a universityin the American Midwest. This group also consisted of undergradu-ates from introductory psychology courses. The American samplereported a mean religiosity rating of 5.40 (SD = 2.59) and a meanpolitical activism rating of 4.07 (SD = 2.23). Participants in both theBritish and American groups were native or fluent speakers of English.

Materials

Typical Intellectual Engagement scale (TIE; Goff & Ackerman,1992). This is a 59-item, self-report inventory that requires partici-pants to respond on a six-point scale to a variety of items assessingthe extent to which they seek, engage in, and enjoy intellectualactivities, such as reading philosophy and solving difficult mentalproblems (example item: “Almost every section of the newspaperhas something in it which interests me”). Some items are reverse-codedprior to scoring, so that a higher score on the TIE indicates highermotivation and tendency to engage in intellectual activities. Moststudies compute a single, overall factor score of TIE (e.g., Ackerman,2000; Ackerman, Kanfer & Goff, 1995; Chamorro-Premuzic, Furnham& Ackerman, 2006). Internal consistency of the TIE in the presentstudy was higher than what has generally been reported in theliterature (British α = 0.91, US α = 0.91).

Belief in a Just World Scale (BJWS; Rubin & Peplau, 1975). TheBJWS is a 20-item scale that measures, on a six-point scale, participants’belief that they live in a world where they get what they deserve anddeserve what they get (example item: “Many people suffer throughabsolutely no fault of their own”). Just World subscale scores werecalculated by summing scores on 11 just world items (British α = 0.58,US α = 0.56) and Unjust World subscale scores were calculated bysumming scores on nine unjust world items after reversing thedirection of responses (British α = 0.69, US α = 0.69).

Attitudes to Experimentation on Animals scale (AEA; Furnham &Heyes, 1993). This is a 60-item questionnaire on beliefs and attitudestoward animal testing and welfare. All items were rated on anine-point scale (1 = Disagree, 9 = Agree; example item: “Undercertain circumstances, experiments involving insects are justifiable”).Previous use of this questionnaire supported a one-dimensional,rather than multi-dimensional, factor of attitudes (Furnham &Heyes, 1993). However, previous studies have not reported alphacoefficients associated with the factors derived from this scale.

Right-wing Authoritarianism scale (RWA). Altemeyer’s (1981, 1988,1996) 30-item RWA assesses three major constructs: authoritarianaggression, authoritarian submission, and conventionality (exampleitem: “It is wonderful that young people can protest against anythingthey don’t like, and act however they wish nowadays”). The RWA israted on a nine-point scale, ranging from very strong agreement(+4) to very strong disagreement (−4), with neutral defined as 0. Thescale has been designed to be one-dimensional (Altemeyer, 1996),and an overall RWA score is calculated by summing all items afterreverse-coding several items. The internal consistency of the RWAin the present study was good (British α = 0.89, US α = 0.93).

Political Alienation Scale (PAS; Malik, 1982). This is a five-itemscale, rated on a dichotomous agree-disagree format, measuringrespondents’ sense of political efficacy and attitudes toward the

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political system (example item: “Sometimes governmental andpolitical affairs look so complex that I am unable to understandthem”). One item is reverse-coded, and higher scores on this scaleindicate greater political alienation (British α = 0.77, US α = 0.73).

Self-Control Scale (SCS; Tangney, Baumeister & Boone, 2004).The SCS is a 36-item scale measuring the capacity to change andadapt so as to produce a more optimal fit between the self and theworld (example item: “I have a hard time breaking bad habits”).The SCS is rated on a five-point scale, and following the reverse-codingof some items, a total SCS score is arrived at by summing responsesto all items. Higher scores are indicative of greater self-control, andinternal consistency coefficients in the present study matched thosereported in earlier studies (British α = 0.86, US α = 0.84).

Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI;Costa & McCrae, 1992). Personality traits were assessed with this60-item self-report scale, which measures the five major dimensionsof personality, namely Extraversion, Openness to Experience,Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism (example item:“I rarely feel fearful of anxious”). Responses are computed on afive-point scale ranging from 0 (Strongly disagree) to 4 (Stronglyagree). There is agreement that these five personality factors arerepresentative of individual differences in normal behavior (e.g.,Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2005). Alpha coefficients were asfollows: Openness (British α = 0.59, US α = 0.61), Conscientiousness(British α = 0.57, US α = 0.62), Extraversion (British α = 0.67, USα = 0.65), Agreeableness (British α = 0.55, US α = 0.55), andNeuroticism (British α = 0.69, US α = 0.65).

Demographics. All participants provided their demographic details,including sex, age, religiosity and political activism.

Procedure

All participants were administered the questionnaire in large lecturetheatres in the presence of experimenters who ensured that participantsdid not share their answers and completed the questionnaire ontheir own. All participants were requested to be as honest as possiblein their responses and were debriefed following the experiment.

RESULTS

Participant descriptives

The results of one-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs)showed significant differences between British and Americanparticipants in age [F(1, 327) = 10.50, p < 0.05; = 0.03]and religiosity [F(1, 327) = 18.05, p < 0.001; = 0.05], butnot in political activism [F(1, 327) = 0.75, p > 0.05]. For thisreason, participant age and religiosity were included ascovariates in all subsequent analyses.

Factor analysis

To examine the factor structure of the AEA, we conductedan exploratory factor analysis. We included both British andAmerican participants in the initial analysis to ensure a sfactor structure, although we also conducted separate ana-lyses within groups (see below). To begin with, a principalcomponents analysis using varimax (orthogonal) rotation

was computed; subsequent principal axis factor analyseswith direct oblimin (oblique) rotation yielded similar results.Here, we report the results of the varimax rotation tohighlight the independent nature of the factors. For eachgroup, the number of factors extracted was determined byexamination of the scree plot (Cattell, 1966) and based onmaximum criteria for the ratio of differences of successiveeigenvalues (Roznowski, Tucker & Humphreys, 1991). Scaleitems were generally grouped by factor of the highestloading (see Table 1).

For the total sample, two factors emerged and accountedfor 24.3% of the variance. Factor 1 contained 23 items thatreferred to general attitudes toward animal testing (Generalattitudes). Higher scores on this factor indicated greateragreement with animal testing under some circumstances,and items loading onto this factor were generally quitepositive (see Table 2). Factor 2 contained items concerningthe welfare and conditions of animal testing (Animal welfareand conditions of testing). Higher scores on this factor indicatedgreater concern for animal welfare. Items on this factorscored relatively positively, suggesting concern for animalwelfare and the conditions under which animal testing takesplace. Internal consistency for the two extracted factors wasvery good (Factor 1 α = 0.96; Factor 2 α = 0.83).

It should be noted that, although we used a varimax rota-tion, the two factors are not orthogonal. This was likely dueto high cross-loadings on some items, reflecting the fact thatin the real world general agreement with animal testing andconcern with animal welfare are likely to be (negatively)related. That is, people who are concerned with animalwelfare and conditions are likely to be opposed to testing(indeed, it was notable that the only time an independentvariable – political alienation – was significantly correlatedwith both factors, the correlation was in opposite directions;see Table 3).

We also ran separate factor analyses for the British andAmerican participants separately. In general, within-groupfactor structures were similar to the overall model, with thesame factors emerging from the analysis. The only exceptionswere that, in general, fewer items loaded onto each factorfor the British and American participants, respectively.Given the relatively small sample sizes, and the overallcorrespondence between within-group factor structures andthe total-sample model, we use the results of the total-sample model for all subsequent analyses.

Sex and national comparisons

We computed two factor scores for each participant bytaking the average of responses to scale items associatedwith each factor, based on the overall factor structure. Itemsthat loaded negatively onto Factor 1 (items 42 and 27) werereverse-scored prior to computing factor scores. The meanscores and SDs for both groups are reported in Table 2. Thetwo factor scores were significantly negatively correlated

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with each other (r = −0.60, p < 0.001). To test for sex andnational differences on factor scores, we computed amultivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA), control-ling for participants’ age and religiosity. The results showedan overall significant effect of nationality [F(2, 321) = 8.39,p < 0.001; = 0.05] and sex [F(2, 321) = 5.60, p < 0.05;

= 003], but no significant nationality × sex interaction[F(2, 321) = 0.51, p > 0.05].

An examination of the ANCOVA results showed thatAmerican participants gave significantly higher ratings forFactor 1 [F(1, 327) = 11.99, p < 0.05; = 0.02], but lowerscores for Factor 2 [F(1, 327) = 16.80, p < 0.05; = 0.05],than their British counterparts. That is, Americans appearedto hold more positive attitudes toward animal testing, andwere less concerned about animal welfare. In addition,women (M = 5.70, SD = 1.44) provided lower ratings thanmen (M = 5.30, SD = 1.59) for Factor 1 [F(1, 327) = 10.90,p < 0.05; = 0.03], indicating that they held more negativeattitudes about animal testing. It should be pointed out,however, that the effect sizes for these results were generallyvery low (cf. Cohen, 1992), although they are generally inline with previous findings.

Table 1. Principal components and loadings for the total sample

Item

Component

1 2

General beliefs (eigenvalue = 11.84, 17.9% of variance accounted for)48. Under certain circumstances, experiments involving rodents (e.g. rats and mice) are justifiable. 0.83 −0.1451. Under certain circumstances, experiments involving primates (monkeys, apes) are justifiable. 0.81 −0.2254. Under certain circumstances, experiments involving cats are justifiable. 0.79 −0.3058. Under certain circumstances, experiments involving birds are justifiable. 0.79 −0.2463. Under certain circumstances, experiments involving insects are justifiable. 0.78 −0.1146. Under certain circumstances, experiments involving dogs are justifiable. 0.72 −0.2552. We need to continue animal laboratory experiments. 0.70 −0.2737. I approve of animal experimentation that leads to the development of effective treatments for physical diseases

afflicting humans.0.67 −0.04

47. I approve of animal experimentation that contributes to the education and training of people. 0.66 −0.1230. I approve of animal experimentation that reveals basic facts about biological processes (e.g. respiration and digestion). 0.66 −0.1131. I approve of animal experimentation that leads to the development of effective treatments for mental diseases

afflicting humans.0.65 −0.06

43. I approve of animal experiments that help to ensure that food is safe for people to eat. 0.63 0.0929. I approve of animal experimentation that reveals basic facts about psychological processes (e.g. learning and thinking). 0.61 −0.0657. The short life span of animals allows hereditary and long-term individual effects to become visible very quickly;

this is a valid reason to allow animal testing.0.57 −0.06

1. As long as they are qualified and legally registered, scientists should be allowed to do research on animals. 0.57 −0.1456. Painful experiments on animals should not be prevented because they can provide knowledge about, and relief from,

human suffering.0.56 −0.04

45. Stray animals that have to be put down might as well be used in experiments that could provide valuable information. 0.54 −0.0539. I approve of animal experimentation that helps to ensure that household cleaners are safe for people to use. 0.51 0.0961. Some experiments cannot be done without animals. 0.51 −0.0119. I would have no objections to working in an animal lab. 0.50 −0.1334. I approve of animal experimentation that helps to ensure that cosmetics are safe for people to use. 0.47 0.1142. I believe in total abolition of animal experiments. −−−−0.45 0.3627. Although animal experimentation provides scientific information, it is not worth the suffering the animals must endure. −−−−0.44 0.42

Animal welfare and conditions of testing (eigenvalue = 4.19, 6.4% of variance accounted for)28. Animals are invariably unhappy when they are living under unnatural conditions. 0.27 0.7123. Every animal that is used in an experiment suffers in one way or another. 0.25 0.6638. It is wrong to schedule animal feeding; animals should have continuous access to food. 0.18 0.5536. It is wrong to keep animals in unnatural conditions. 0.25 0.5424. All methods of killing animals make them suffer. 0.14 0.5150. All animal experimentation is morally incorrect. 0.43 0.4514. Like people, animals need to live in light, airy conditions in order to thrive. 0.09 0.4222. It is wrong to kill animals, even if the method is painless. 0.25 0.42

Table 2. Means, standard deviations and alpha coefficients for eachof the factor scores derived from the AEA

Item

British participants American participants

M SD α M SD α

Factor 1 5.37 1.40 0.91 5.65 1.67 0.93Factor 2 5.54 1.36 0.80 4.87 1.63 0.85

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Table 3. Correlations between factor scores and participants’ demographic and psychological variables

Fac 1 Fac 2 Age ReligiosityPoliticalactivism TIE

Just World

UnjustWorld RWA PA SC Neur Extr Open Agre Cons

Fac 1 − −0.60** −0.03 0.13* 0.08 0.09 0.09 0.02 0.16** −0.14* −0.11 −0.05 0.07 −0.14* −0.12* 0.05Fac 2 − 0.07 −0.05 −0.11* −0.07 0.06 0.10 −0.02 0.22* 0.11 0.01 −0.02 −0.05 −0.09 −0.03Age − −0.02 0.02 0.13* −0.02 0.00 −0.05 −0.01 −0.02 −0.05 −0.02 −0.02 0.05 0.08Religiosity – 0.14* −0.05 0.10 −0.03 0.45** −0.01 −0.11* 0.01 0.08 −0.15* −0.08 0.17**Political activism – 0.29** 0.01 0.02 −0.05 −0.23** 0.05 −0.03 0.09 0.02 0.06 0.09TIE – −0.13* 0.04 −0.33* −0.13* −0.10 −0.10 0.04 0.40** 0.09 0.08Just World – 0.02 0.32* −0.08 −0.10 −0.21** 0.20** −0.23** −0.07 0.26**Unjust World – −0.14** 0.16** −0.08 0.14* −0.01 0.15* 0.03 −0.09RWA – 0.00 −0.12* 0.01 0.12* −0.34* −0.04 0.30*PA – 0.03 0.11* −0.17** 0.00 0.03 −0.16**SC – 0.03 −0.09 0.04 −0.11 −0.16*Neur – −0.28** −0.16** 0.21** −0.21**Extr – −0.04 −0.22** 0.20**Open – −0.12** −0.11**Agre – −0.29**

M 5.49 5.25 19.55 4.69 4.19 230.11 58.05 49.79 15.76 2.39 112.83 35.28 41.56 37.93 31.59 42.60SD 1.53 1.52 3.79 2.72 2.13 31.09 10.98 8.57 3.46 1.23 7.07 6.58 5.80 5.51 5.58 5.27Skewness −0.16 −0.07 4.88 −0.08 0.11 0.10 −0.54 −0.06 −0.15 0.38 −0.21 0.50 −0.16 0.76 −0.16 0.16Kurtosis −0.08 −0.02 26.25 −1.39 −0.93 −0.33 1.08 −0.24 0.50 −0.58 0.61 0.72 0.34 0.44 −0.27 0.60

Notes: Fac 1 = AEA Factor 1; Fac 2 = AEA Factor 2; TIE = Typical Intellectual Engagement; RWA = Right-Wing Authoritarianism; PA = Political Alienation; SC = Self-Control; Neur = Neuroticism; Extr = Extraversion; Open = Openness; Agre = Agreeableness; Cons = Conscientiousness.* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01.

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Predictors of attitudes

To investigate the predictors of attitudes toward animaltesting and welfare, the two overall factor scores wereinitially univariately correlated with the various predictorvariables (see Table 3). Factor 1 was significantly positivelycorrelated with religiosity and RWA, and negatively corre-lated with political alienation, openness, and agreeableness.These items were, therefore, offered as candidate variables toa multivariate forward stepwise regression model. Thisregression method selects the fewest number of variablesoffered to the model that best describe the occurrence of theoutcome (attitudes toward animal testing). Of the itemsentered into the model, RWA explained the greatest pro-portion of variance in Factor 1 [F(1, 324) = 8.65, p < 0.05;R2 = 0.02]. Further steps in the regression were also signifi-cant with the addition of political alienation [F(2, 324) =7.82, p < 0.001; ΔR2 = 0.02] and agreeableness [F(3, 324) =7.30, p < 0.001; ΔR2 = 0.02].

Factor 2 was only significantly negatively correlated withpolitical activism and positively correlated with politicalalienation. When these items were offered to the sameregression model as before, we found political alienationexplained 4% of the variance [F(1, 327) = 15.89, p < 0.001;R2 = 0.04]. Political activism did not meet the significancecriteria for entry into the model after political alienation hadbeen added.

DISCUSSION

In the present study, we showed that attitudes toward animaltesting, as measured by Furnham and Heyes’ (1993) AEA,could meaningfully be reduced to a two-factor structure.Based on factor scores derived from the factor analysis, wefound a number of small (but significant) cross-national andsex differences. Finally, the present results showed that therewere few individual difference predictors of attitudes towardanimal testing and welfare. In general, these findings areconsistent with what has previously been reported by studiesof attitudes toward animal welfare (e.g. Broida et al., 1993;Furnham & Heyes, 1993; Furnham & Pinder, 1990;Furnham et al., 2003; Matthews & Herzog, 1997; Vigorito,1996). However, the present results also extend earlierreports in a number of different ways, which we turn to below.

The structure of attitudes toward animal testing appearsto be both multi-faceted and stable. This is indicated by thehigh internal consistency of factor scores derived from theAEA. It should be noted, however, that using the same scale,Furnham and Heyes (1993) extracted five factors. Althoughit is possible that this discrepancy may be due to differencesin sampling, it is also possible that the earlier studyover-estimated the number of stable factors, particularly asalpha coefficients were not reported and extraction criteriawere not fully defined. We, therefore, suggest that attitudestoward animal testing – as measured by the AEA – can

meaningfully be reduced to two factors relating to generalattitudes and attitudes toward animal welfare and conditionsof testing.

Overall, the participants of this study appear to be some-what supportive of animal testing and welfare, as indicatedby the relatively positive scores on Factors 1 and 2. It shouldbe pointed out that this is somewhat different from theresults of earlier studies, which generally find that attitudestoward animal testing are negative. It may be that debatesabout the benefits of animal testing, particularly for theadvancement of the medical sciences, have filtered down tothe general public. Moreover, university undergraduates arelikely to encounter such debates within academic settings. Ingeneral, then, the present results suggest that attitudestoward animal testing may be more positive than previousstudies have found.

When factor scores derived from the factor analysis werecompared across samples and sexes, we found significantnational differences on both factors, as well as significant sexdifferences on Factor 1. The latter finding is consistent withthe available literature (Furnham & Pinder, 1990; Furnham& Heyes, 1993; Galvin et al., 1996; Goldsmith et al., 2006)showing that women tend to be more anti-animal testingthan men. It has been suggested that this difference inattitudes may be associated with women being more“tender-minded” than men (e.g., Broida et al., 1993), whichleads them to being more concerned about issues involvingpain or death. By contrast, men – who are socialized to bemasculine and emotionally restricted (Traue, 1998) – may beless sensitive to the use of animals in experimentation.

The significant cross-national differences are moredifficult to explain. Specifically, we found that Americanundergraduates were more positive than their Britishcounterparts in their attitudes toward animal testing, andwere also less concerned about animal welfare and conditionsof testing. It is possible that recent high profile campaignsfor animal welfare and animal rights in Britain has put animaltesting high on the agenda, resulting in more negativeattitudes toward such testing (cf. Jha, 2005). An alternativeexplanation is that these findings are a statistical artifact asa result of sample representativeness (see below). Thisexplanation is corroborated by the small effect sizes of thesedifferences. Future studies should, therefore, attempt toreplicate these findings across cultures while using larger andmore representative samples.

Finally, our results showed only weak associationsbetween various individual difference variables and attitudestoward animal testing and welfare. In the first instance, wefound that a number of included variables were not significantpredictors of factor scores, particularly TIE, just and unjustworld beliefs, self-control, and the Big Five personalityfacets of neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness.On the other hand, negative general attitudes toward animaltesting were predicted by lower RWA, higher politicalalienation and higher agreeableness. By contrast, negative

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attitudes towards animal welfare were only predicted byhigher political alienation. In general, however, these indi-vidual difference variables were poor predictors of attitudestoward animal testing, never accounting for more than 10%of the variance in the data. In general, this is consistent withthe findings of previous studies, which also report thatindividual difference variables such as agreeableness generallydo not account for more than 10–15% of variance in attitudestoward animal testing (e.g., Furnham et al., 2003).

In terms of limitations, it should be pointed out that ourparticipants were college undergraduates who may not havebeen representative of their national populations. Thisnecessarily impedes generalization of the present findings,and future work would do well to sample more representativepopulations. In addition, some of the scales used in thepresent study showed low internal consistency, whichnecessarily limited our ability to find significant relation-ships in the data. This limitation might be overcome byusing larger, more representative samples in future work.There are a number of other ways in which future studiescould further build on the present research. For instance, itis notable that all studies on animal testing to date have beenconducted in Western societies, often with university under-graduates as samples. To further extend our knowledge ofsuch attitudes, it will be useful for future work to examinethese attitudes in disparate cultures, particularly where theremay be different attitudes toward animals.

In conclusion, this study showed that the AEA could bereduced to a two-factor structure and that there were significant,albeit small, differences by nationality and sex. In addition,the individual difference variables included in the presentstudy were found to be weak predictors of attitudes toanimal testing and welfare, which is consistent with theextant literature. Furthering this research will be of importancefor public policy practitioners, particularly in the face ofpublic debate over animal testing.

We are grateful for the helpful comments of Kati Heinonen and twoanonymous reviewers on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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Received 13 May 2007, accepted 3 September 2007