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Treves et al.'s target article emphasizes the importance of including nonhuman animals in the scope of conservation frameworks, countering an anthropocentric orientation in conservation biology. In support, I discuss how stereotypes of other animal species may bias our behavior toward them.

En esta investigación se examina la relación entre la conducta individual de las personas y su percepción social sobre la conducta de los españoles en materia medioambiental dentro del marco teórico de los sesgos cognitivos de falso consenso y falsa unicidad. Se hizo uso de una encuesta realizada por el CIS (2005; estudio n.º 2590) sobre una muestra representativa de la población española formada por 2.490 participantes. Los resultados muestran que las personas cuya frecuencia de comportamientos proambientales resultó ser moderada mostraron una clara tendencia a atribuir a los españoles esa misma frecuencia en su comportamiento pro-ambiental. Sin embargo, aquellos cuyo comportamiento pro-ambiental resultó ser más extremo, debido a una alta frecuencia de conductas pro-ambientales, mostraron una tendencia a atribuir un comportamiento distinto del suyo. Estas personas se consideraron como diferentes del resto de la población. Además, se encontró que las diferencias en la percepción social del comportamiento de los españoles en materia medioambiental están asociadas con percepciones diferentes del deterioro ambiental y de la preocupación hacia el medio ambiente.

Abstract. Nonhuman animals are typically excluded from the scope of social psychology. This article presents animals as social objects – targets of human social responses – overviewing the similarities and differences with human targets. The focus here is on perceiving animal species as social groups. Reflecting the two fundamental dimensions of humans' social cognition – perceived warmth (benign or ill intent) and competence (high or low ability), proposed within the Stereotype Content Model ( Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002 ) – animal stereotypes are identified, together with associated prejudices and behavioral tendencies. In line with human intergroup threats, both realistic and symbolic threats associated with animals are reviewed. As a whole, animals appear to be social perception targets within the human sphere of influence and a valid topic for research.

This article examines the impact of visual images and perspective taking on concern for environmental problems. Participants in the experiment were 193 university students. Results replicated earlier results showing that perspective taking, combined with images of animals harmed by nature, caused an increase in biospheric environmental concerns. In addition, results showed that the empathic dimension of personal distress moderated the relationship between kind of image and kind of perspective on both biospheric and egoistic environmental concerns. Results about the lack of other moderating effects are discussed.