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Description: Whose welfare and interests matter from a moral perspective? This question is at the center of many polarizing debates, for example, on the ethicality of abortion or meat consumption. A widely-cited hypothesis holds that attributions of moral standing are guided by which mental capacities an entity is perceived to have. Specifically, perceived sentience (e.g., the capacity to feel pleasure and pain) is thought to be the primary determinant, rather than perceived agency (e.g., the capacity for intelligence) or other capacities. This has been described as a fundamental feature of moral cognition, but the evidence for this is mixed and overwhelmingly based on North American and European samples. Here, we examined the link between attributions of mind and moral standing across six culturally diverse countries: Brazil, Nigeria, Italy, Saudi Arabia, India, and the Philippines (N = 1,255). In every country, entities’ moral standing was most strongly related to their perceived sentience.