Assessing positivity and negativity biases: Emotions and attitudes influence animal cognitive salience in a French National Park

Abstract

Abstract Human representations, attitudes and behaviors are influenced by a range of cognitive biases increasingly understood by neuroscience, psychology and economics. Similarly, how cognitive biases affect people’s relationships with non-human livings is an emerging research topic in conservation biology. Yet, assessing cognitive biases remain a methodological challenge in this field of research that mostly rely on in-vivo methods. This study presents an interview-based approach that links cognitive salience and people’s attitudes and emotions to assess positivity and negativity biases. The approach was tested in the Cevennes National Park in France where we investigated how animal cognitive salience was influenced by people’s attitudes and emotions towards animals. Interviews conducted with 100 respondents combined free-listing tasks of the fauna to assess animal cognitive salience and questions to inform people’s attitudes and emotions towards listed animals. Relationships between cognitive salience and attitudes and emotions were analyzed through multi- and bivariate analyses. Respondents listed a total of 154 animals and mainly associated them with positive attitudes and emotions. A significant relationship was found between animal cognitive salience and people’s attitudes and emotions (ANOVA, p < 0.0001): animals associated with positive emotions were more salient in people’s minds than others, and disliked and negative animals had the second highest cognitive salience score. Aligning with neuroscience advances, results suggested the coexistence of a positivity bias and, to a lesser extent, of a negativity bias. We finally discuss the limitations and transferability potential of this approach for further investigating how cognitive biases may influence biodiversity conservation efforts.