london people do love dogs more than fellow human beings say scientists who have found that individuals are more distressed by reports of pooches being beaten up than they are by the same reports about adult humansresearchers from harrisons fund a ukbased medical research charity conducted an experimentthey printed two adverts which asked would you give 5 pounds to save harrison from a slow painful deathhowever in one of the adverts harrison was a human and in the other it was a dogresearchers found that harrison the dog got significantly more clicks than harrison the humanin another study conducted by researchers from the northeastern university in the us 240 students were presented with a fake newspaper clippingit described police reports about an attack with a baseball bat by an unknown assailanthowever the victim was changed for different people it was either a oneyearold infant a 30yearold adult a puppy or a sixyearold adult dogstudents described their emotions using a standard set of questions designed to produce a measure of empathy the times reportedthe study published in the journal society and animals found that people registered similar levels of empathy for the child the dog or the puppyhowever the respondents were less distressed when adult humans were victimizedthe research showed that people considered dogs as equivalent members of their family and feelings of empathy are related to the perceived helplessness of the victimone reason why adults attacked by baseball bats might elicit less sympathy is that we tend to partially blame the victim researchers said