Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Jerusalem, 7 May, 2025 (TPS-IL) — While nearly a third of Israelis routinely feed stray cats, an overwhelming majority also support reducing their numbers, exposing a tension between emotional compassion and ecological concern, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The Hebrew University researchers Dr. Idit Gunther, Prof. Eyal Klement, and Doron Levin surveyed 700 people at major public transportation hubs across Israel and found that 32% of respondents had fed stray cats in the previous month, with more than 11% doing so daily.

But despite this, 77% of all participants — including many of those who feed cats — agreed that the stray population should be reduced. Notably, daily feeders were less supportive of reduction efforts than occasional or non-feeders.

“People want humane solutions,” said Klement. “But those solutions need to be accompanied by greater public awareness of how feeding behaviors affect population dynamics.”

According to the research, which was recently published in the peer-reviewed Preventive Veterinary Medicine, compassion often drives individuals to feed stray cats, but this well-meaning act can inadvertently exacerbate the problem.

“People feed stray cats out of compassion. But they don’t always understand or take responsibility for the consequences,” Gunther said. “Abundant food, together with the cat’s rapid reproductive capabilities, leads to dense and crowded populations. These conditions increase competition, disease transmission, and mortality—raising not only animal welfare concerns, but also risks to public health and urban ecology.”

Cat overpopulation poses serious risks to animal welfare, public health, and the environment. Crowded conditions lead to hunger, disease, fighting, and high mortality among cats, problems that even regular feeding cannot fully prevent. Stray cats also spread diseases such as toxoplasmosis, cat scratch fever, and, more rarely, rabies. Free-roaming cats can also sometimes devastate local wildlife.

While the majority of Israelis expressed concern about overpopulation, most rejected lethal control methods. The study found that 90% of respondents opposed culling as a strategy to manage the cat population. Although Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programs were generally supported as a humane alternative, the study noted that the support was not as overwhelming as policymakers might hope. Religious respondents were found to be significantly more hesitant to endorse TNR, suggesting that cultural or religious norms may influence attitudes toward sterilization efforts.

The research also pointed to a potential untapped resource in frequent cat feeders. Many of those who feed stray cats care for multiple animals and sometimes provide medical care. Their deep commitment to the animals, the researchers argue, could be redirected into structured efforts to monitor and stabilize cat populations.

“Feeders already have strong emotional investments and established relationships with these animals,” Dr. Gunther said. “By involving them more formally, we can create more effective and compassionate management strategies.”

The study recommended that municipalities pair sterilization campaigns with targeted public education initiatives. Without addressing the link between food availability and population growth, efforts to manage stray cats are unlikely to succeed in the long term, according to the study.

International comparisons suggest that Israeli attitudes toward stray cats are not unique. Similar patterns have been observed in the United States and parts of Europe, where public compassion for free-roaming cats often coexists with concern about their ecological impact. Like in Israel, TNR programs are widely favored abroad as humane alternatives to culling.

However, the active involvement of cat feeders in management efforts remains relatively rare outside Israel. Additionally, cultural and religious factors appear to play a more prominent role in shaping public opinion in Israel compared to more secular European contexts, where sterilization is typically less controversial, the scientists said.

Jerusalem, 28 April, 2025 (TPS-IL) — Overturning long-held assumptions about how people react to news and information that challenges their beliefs, a groundbreaking Israeli study suggests that factual knowledge can reduce polarization on divisive political issues

“Our study shows that people are more open-minded than we often assume,” said Dr. Eran Amsalem, a senior lecturer at the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University. “When individuals are given high-quality, balanced facts and a reason to learn them, they don’t simply cling to their old beliefs—they revise them. This offers a hopeful message: factual knowledge, when properly delivered, can be a powerful antidote to polarization across a range of contentious issues.”

Amsalem, along with Dr. Michael Nicholas Stagnaro of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led a team of researchers who found that audiences presented with balanced, credible information were more likely to moderate their views. The findings offer some of the clearest evidence to date that exposure to counter-attitudinal information, when properly delivered, can foster more open-mindedness—and that the effects can persist over time.

The study was recently published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications journal.

For years, political science research has supported the idea of “motivated reasoning,” a phenomenon where individuals selectively accept facts that support their preexisting views while rejecting facts that challenge them, often becoming even more extreme in the process. Many experts assumed that efforts to provide information about divisive topics would only deepen political divides. However, Amsalem and Stagnaro’s findings challenge that assumption directly.

In a randomized experiment involving more than 1,000 Americans, participants were presented with a large body of credible facts about gun control — some of which reinforced their existing opinions and others that contradicted them. They were modestly incentivized to engage carefully with the material. Rather than avoiding facts that challenged their views, participants read and absorbed the information, and crucially, retained it. When researchers followed up a month later, participants still remembered what they had learned, and their views on gun control remained more moderate than before.

The study not only showed that factual learning can shift opinions away from the extremes, but that gaining knowledge does not have to come at the price of greater interpersonal animosity, a common fear in discussions of political polarization.

“This research challenges the notion that people are hopelessly locked into their political identities,” said Stagnaro. “It suggests that, under the right conditions, minds can change — and stay changed.”

The findings suggest that political moderation is a realistic outcome if societies invest in delivering balanced, high-quality information and motivate people to engage with it.

The results could inform a broad range of efforts — from civic education and journalism to social media design and public policy communication — highlighting the need to prioritize not just the accuracy of information, but also its presentation, accessibility, and balance.

“At a time when trust in institutions is fragile and extremism spreads easily, our findings highlight the importance of making credible, balanced information readily available,” Amsalem said. “There is real potential for societies to reclaim the middle ground if we invest in the right informational tools.”