Children are less self-serving than adults in their concern for the animals we eat

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

Abstract

Past research shows that adult meat eaters are motivated to ignore relevant dimensions for animals that they consume. For example, adult meat eaters will disregard intelligence information, that may have otherwise been considered for a non-food animal, when forming judgments of food animal treatment. How children value animal life is much less understood but recent studies suggest children are less biased in their judgements made about different types of animals.
Two studies tested whether children, between 5 and 11 years old, exhibit strategic use of information in the way that adult meat eaters do. Compared to adults, children were expected to be less accepting of harm to food animals. Adults were expected to utilise intelligence information in their moral judgments more for non-food animals than for food animals as well as in their judgments of eating animals when taking the perspective of another person but less so when providing their own judgment.
Adults (majority British) and children from Lancashire, England were compared using experimental methods. Perceptions of the intelligence of an animal were manipulated, as well as their status as food (chickens vs. kakapos, Study 1) and the perspective taken by the participant (self vs. other, Study 2). The wrongness of harming the animal was assessed in multiple forms (Study 1) including eating the animal (Studies 1-2). In Study 1, participants (children, n = 148, Mage = 8.47 years, adults, n = 410, Mage = 31.13) were presented information about the intelligence of chickens (bird commonly eaten) or kakapos (bird not commonly eaten), and judged the wrongness of harming, displacing, caging, and slaughtering the animal for food. Adults judged it more wrong to kill intelligent vs. unintelligent kakapos, but disregarded intelligence information with regards to judging chicken slaughter. By contrast, children showed no differential use of intelligence information. Overall, children judged it more wrong to slaughter both birds, compared to adults. In Study 2 children (n = 147, Mage = 8.48 years) and adults (n = 389, Mage = 31.46 years) were presented information about the intelligence of another food animal (cows). This time they either encountered the information themselves or learned that another person had encountered it. They judged the wrongness of cow slaughter, either from their own perspective or another person’s perspective. Adults believed that others would feel guilty about eating intelligent cows, but their own moral judgments were not affected by admitting the intelligence of cows. By contrast, children condemned eating intelligent cows as much as they believed others would.
Overall, our findings show that children hold more moralistic views of the use of animals as food, relative to adults. Further, adults tended to use intelligence information in a self-serving manner, whereas children did not exhibit such motivated behaviour. Thus, pre-adolescent children’s reasoning about food animals does not yet exhibit the self-serving processes characteristic of adult meat eaters. This suggests children are not yet aware of their causal role in the production of meat or are not connecting this consumer role to their judgments of meat eating.

Authors

• Heather Henseler-Kozachenko
  Presenting Author

• Jared Piazza