What international psychology studies say about hobby hunters

In survey studies, hobby hunters consistently cite four main motives: nature experience, tradition, meat acquisition and wildlife management.

Several studies and an analysis by Hinrichs et al. (2021) in Human Dimensions of Wildlife examined these self-reports across several thousand respondents in the USA and confirmed the ranking. At first glance, this sounds harmless.

The problem lies in the methodology: self-reporting measures what people are willing to admit, not their actual or unconscious motives. Those who primarily seek nature experiences do not need weapons. Those who want to conduct wildlife management could finance professional wildlife wardens. And those who need meat in Switzerland can find it at the nearest supermarket, without lead shot and stress hormones. Therefore, research that does not ask about motives but about personality traits is more meaningful.

Dark Triad: The most uncomfortable finding of hunting psychology

Personality research provides the most precise insights. Kavanagh et al. (2013) investigated the relationship between so-called 'Dark Triad' personality traits and behavior toward animals, with results that Beattie (2019), Trophy Hunting: A Psychological Perspective, Routledge, evaluates as the most robust explanatory framework for trophy hunting motivation. Narcissism: One's own need for dominance and admiration outweighs the welfare of other living beings. Machiavellianism: Animals and nature are instrumentalized as means to achieve personal goals, prestige, social status, political influence. Subclinical psychopathy: diminished emotional response to pain and death in other living beings as well as increased readiness for intentional killing without necessity.

Persons with high values in all three traits show significantly less empathy toward animals and commit animal cruelty more frequently, and not only in extreme cases, but as a statistically measurable difference from the general population. In Beattie's analysis, the Dark Triad traits prove to be the strongest explanatory framework for trophy hunting motivation, stronger than social or cultural factors.

How these mechanisms are translated into real politics in Canton Schwyz:Psychology of recreational hunting in Canton Schwyz

German-language evidence: The dissertation by Ursula Grohs

That these international findings are not a purely Anglo-Saxon matter is shown by the only systematic investigation in the German-speaking world to date. The dissertation«Psychological-sociological differences between hobby hunters and non-hunters» by Ursula Grohs came to a result that supports the Dark Triad research on a different methodological level: Recreational hunters assess themselves as significantly more aggressive than non-hunters, resolve conflicts more frequently through dominance and control, and show a measurably different relationship to violence.

The work is methodologically sound but has not been replicated for years. That precisely in the German-speaking world, where well over half a million people in Switzerland, Germany and Austria possess hunting licenses and legally carry firearms, no follow-up research exists, is a scientific gap with societal implications.

Recreational hunters and non-hunters do not differ in their connection to nature.

Grohs' findings align with what Kavanagh et al. describe at the personality level and Beattie at the motivational level: The willingness to kill animals voluntarily and without necessity correlates with personality patterns that are considered risk factors in other contexts.

Further background:Psychology & hunting.

Toxic masculinity and predator persecution

A much-discussed essay by Jeff Loewen (2025) deepens the Dark Triad finding and connects it with a politically relevant pattern: Trophy hunters instrumentalize narratives about 'wildlife management' and 'livestock protection' to eliminate wolves, bears and lynx, not primarily out of fear of livestock attacks, but to make more conventional trophy animals available for themselves.

This structurally explains why the hunting lobby in Switzerland, Austria and Germany proceeds so coordinatedly and emotionally against predators. When a natural predator takes over the 'regulatory function' that recreational hunters claim as their core competence, recreational hunting loses its most important legitimizing foundation and thus also a central pillar of identity. The wolf is thus not perceived as an ecological actor, but as a competitor.

More on this in the dossier: The Wolf in Europe: Why Recreational Hunting Is No Solution

Moral Disengagement: How to Make Killing Normal

Albert Bandura's theory of 'Moral Disengagement' describes how people can commit actions that contradict their own values without feeling guilt. Studies on hunting motivation show that almost all mechanisms described by Bandura are systematically employed in recreational hunting: 'Removal' instead of 'killing' as euphemistic language distances from the real act. 'Population management' as moral justification reframes killing as a nature conservation service. 'Problem wolf' and 'pest wildlife' assign blame to the animal, making its death appear necessary. And 'the authorities ordered it' shifts responsibility into the system and makes individual choice invisible.

This finding is significant because it shows: The moral problem does not lie with individual 'bad' hobby hunters, but in the system of recreational hunting itself, which institutionalizes and reproduces these mechanisms.

In-depth: Why We Must Rethink How We Talk About the Psychology of Recreational Hunting

The Counter-Study: Lobby-Financed Science

As a reaction to growing legitimacy pressure, the hunting lobby launches its own 'research'. The Austrian platform jagdfakten.at promotes a study by Prof. Dietmar Heubrock, according to which hobby hunters are 'psychologically more stable, less depressive and more capable of conflict' than the general population.

The methodological limitations of this study are considerable: It is based on self-reporting, the most unreliable instrument in personality research. It was communicated and financed by hunting-affiliated institutions. And it did not appear in an independent peer-review journal for personality psychology.

It is thus a textbook example of interest-driven research and simultaneously demonstrates how much the hunting lobby feels the pressure from independent psychological science. FACE (the European hunting lobby association) also recently launched a data campaign under the title 'Why do people become hunters? New data challenges common stereotypes', a direct reaction to the growing body of research that undermines recreational hunting's self-image.

The Research Gap in German-Speaking Countries

In German-speaking countries, there are hardly any independent, replicated studies on hunting psychology. This is no coincidence: hunting associations have influence on cantonal and national research funding, and critical scientists avoid a field that must reckon with political headwinds.

This is politically explosive: In Switzerland alone, around 30,000 legally armed private individuals regularly carry weapons into nature and kill over 120,000 wild animals annually. That the psychology of this practice is not systematically researched is not a scientific coincidence, but the result of structural influence.

What is needed: independent, publicly funded longitudinal studies on personality profiles, motivational structures and behavioral patterns of hobby hunters in German-speaking countries, without self-selection bias, without lobby financing.

Related: Between Tradition and Killing: The Psychology of Hobby Hunters | Hunting in the Mind: What Violence Does to the Brain

Netherlands as Model: When Psychology Becomes Practice

What is considered politically unthinkable in Switzerland has long been reality in the Netherlands. With the 'E-Screener', the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security introduced a mandatory psychological test for all gun owners and hunting license holders in 2019, triggered by a rampage by a man who, according to the Supreme Court, should never have been issued a gun license by police due to psychological problems. The result: Every fifth hobby hunter fails. The hunting lobby's reaction was telling: The Dutch hunting association immediately demanded the abolition of the test and recommended its members postpone their appointments to avoid losing their licenses in the middle of hunting season.

What research means for political debate

As long as the psychology of hobby hunting remains invisible, political debate goes in circles: People discuss harvest numbers, damage thresholds and hunting seasons, not the fundamental question of why a democracy organizes and subsidizes recreational violence against animals at the state level.

The implications of the international research are clear: A psychological aptitude test as a mandatory component of hunting licenses—the Netherlands shows this works. Independent research funding on hunting motivation that is not co-financed or controlled by hunting associations. And the decoupling of hobby hunting from wildlife management: Professional game wardens without recreational interests must take over sovereign duties, transparently, controlled, evidence-based.

Psychology provides no surprises for those who have long critically observed hobby hunting. But it provides something more important: language, concepts and evidence to hit the hunting lobby's self-image where it is vulnerable, at its scientific foundation.

The editorial team welcomes references to additional studies or research results. Write to us: info@wildbeimwild.com

More on this in the dossier: Psychology of Hunting