Perceptions of treating and eating animals among adolescents

• In Event: The development of speciesism: Children’s and adolescents’ moral cognition regarding animals and the natural world

Abstract

Humans care for the wellbeing of some animals (e.g., dogs, valued wild animals) while tacitly endorsing the maltreatment of others (e.g., pigs, rats). What treatment is deemed morally appropriate for an animal depends in part on the species the animal belongs to. This moral hierarchy of beings depending on their species membership (i.e., speciesism) has important implications for our treatment of animals and decisions about eating animals, a behavior which in turn has far-reaching ecological consequences. Recent research has demonstrated that children, compared to adults, are less likely to categorise farm animals as “food”, are less speciesist (as measured by a standardised scale), and view eating animals as less morally acceptable, due to concerns for animal welfare (McGuire et al., 2022). So far, less is known regarding such perceptions in adolescence, which is an important developmental period in which youth experience increasing autonomy over decisions such as diet and may become increasingly aware of the realities of food production (e.g., factory farming).

In a pre-registered study, adolescents (n = 93, M+-SD = 13.54 +- 1.87, 10 - 18-years-old, female n = 41, male n = 47) and adults (n = 113, M+-SD = 43.73 +- 14.26, 19 - 78-years-old, female n = 53, male n = 59) from the UK responded to tasks including animal categorisation, speciesism, meat and animal product evaluation and accompanying reasoning (i.e. “why is it okay or not okay to eat animals?”). Compared to adults, adolescents were more likely to categorise a farm animal as a ‘pet’ than as ‘food’ (X2(1) = 19.14, p < .001). However, compared to adults, adolescents reported higher levels of speciesism (F(5,191) = 5.98, p < .001), believed that pigs ought to be treated less well (t(209) = -3.26, p = .001), and rated eating animals (F(5,193) = 7.617, p < .001) and their products (F(5,192) = 4.04, p < .001) as more morally acceptable. Participants who reported eating animals to be morally acceptable reasoned that eating meat was natural and necessary, with some reference to “ethical slaughter” practices (i.e., eating animals is more acceptable when they are killed in a humane way).

Together, these findings provide insight into adolescents’ thinking about humans’ treatment of animals. While existing work has shown that children demonstrate greater concern for animal lives than adults, the current findings contrast this by suggesting that adolescents report lower concern for animal lives than adults and believe it to be more morally permissible to eat animals with less reference to concerns for animal welfare. These findings will be discussed using a cognitive dissonance framework to examine the possibility that such evaluations point to emerging dissonance resulting from adolescents gaining knowledge about the harm caused by food systems.

Authors

• Luke McGuire, University Of Exeter
  Presenting Author

• Emma Fry

• Nadira Faber