Exploring Differences in Compassionate Traits Within Adult Virtual-Pet Hobbyists

Volume 1, No. 1
Online ISSN: 3071-0898

© The authors. This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons 4.0 License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Exploring Differences in Compassionate Traits Within Adult Virtual-Pet Hobbyists

CONFERENCE ABSTRACT

Seth Stallings* and Tamara Avant⁺

School of Health Sciences, Barton College, Wilson, NC, USA
*Student author, ⁺Faculty mentor

CITATION

Stallings, Seth; Avant, Tamara. (2026). Exploring differences in compassionate traits within adult virtual-pet hobbyists [Conference abstract]. Barton Journal, 1(1), 184–185. https://bartonjournal.org/vol-1-no-1/2026-cat4-article-no-032

Abstract

Tsai and Kaufman (2010) demonstrated that caring for virtual pets (i.e., consistent interactions between children and a virtual pet dog) led to greater empathetic/humane behavior. This study examined compassionate behavior in adult fans of virtual pets (V-Pets) by examining how differences in playing behavior may be connected to participants’ levels of compassion. A survey was sent out to online spaces dedicated to V-Pet hobbyists (e.g., websites and discussion forums), asking participants (N = 303) about their favorite parts of interacting with V-pets, followed by the 5-point Compassion Scale (2019). Findings show overall high total compassion scores (M = 4.09, SD = 0.47). Those who reported caretaking as a preferred way of play scored significantly lower on the common humanity subscale (M = 4.27, SD = 0.58) than those who did not (M = 4.41, SD = 0.54), F(1, 301) = 4.48, p < .05. Common humanity scores were also influenced by how they reported playing with V-Pets; those who used both sites and devices showed the lowest mean common humanity scores (M = 4.06, SD = 0.64), followed by just devices (M = 4.29, SD = 0.59), with V-Pet site players having the highest common humanity scores (M = 4.40, SD = 0.53), F(2, 300) = 4.76, p < .01. These findings suggest that higher common humanity scores may impact how adults choose to interact with V-pets, and the preference of V-pet sites, which have more inherent human interaction, over devices, which can be operated individually and without additional social interaction.

Keywords: virtual pets, compassion, social interaction

References

Tsai, Lily & Kaufman, David. (2014). Interacting with a computer-simulated pet: Factors influencing children’s humane attitudes and empathy. Journal of Educational Computing Research. 51, 145–161. doi:10.2190/EC.51.2.a

Pommier, E., Neff, K. D., & Tóth-Király, I. (2020). The development and validation of the compassion scale. Assessment, 27(1), 21–39. doi:10.1177/1073191119874108

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