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Why are women less likely to support animal exploitation than men? The mediating roles of social dominance orientation and empathy
Abstract
Women tend to be more concerned about the welfare of (human/nonhuman) animals and the natural environment than men. A growing literature has shown that gender differences in environmental exploitation can be explained partially by the fact that women and men differ in their social dominance and empathic orientations. We extend past studies by examining whether social dominance orientation (SDO; ‘Superior groups should dominate inferior groups’) and empathy (‘I feel others’ emotions’) also help explain gender differences in attitudes towards nonhuman animals. Our mediation model confirmed that SDO and empathy partially and independently mediate gender differences in human supremacy beliefs (‘Animals are inferior to humans’) and/or speciesism (‘I think it is perfectly acceptable for cattle, chickens and pigs to be raised for human consumption’) among 1002 individuals (57% female; Mage = 26.44) from the general population in Portugal. These findings provide evidence that traits referring to human–human relations can help explain gender differences in human–animal relations. The cumulative evidence suggests that exploitative tendencies towards the natural environment and (human/nonhuman) animals may be built upon shared psychological mechanisms.
... Speciesism is directly related to the way we perceive animals, and, for instance, it is strongly related to both meat-eating behavior and a low interest in animal welfare (Caviola et al., 2019;Hoffarth et al., 2019). Echoing the gender gap on attitudes toward animals, men are known to endorse more speciesist attitudes than women (Caviola et al., 2019;Graça et al., 2018;Hoffarth et al., 2019). Therefore, the gender gap in attitudes toward animal experimentation may be explained by underlying gender differences in speciesism. ...
... Empathy, which is the ability to understand and share others' affective and mental states (Davis, 1996;Singer & Decety, 2011), is a personality marker with a strong hereditary component (for a review: Hastings et al., 2006) and is stable across the lifespan (e.g., van Lissa et al., 2014). Importantly, empathy is one of two dispositions identified as mediating the relationship between gender and speciesism (Graça et al., 2018). Empathy is not limited to human-to-human interactions but can be generalized to other animal species (Filippi et al., 2010). ...
... Empathy is the intrinsic tendency to care about others; therefore, it is not surprising that this trait is negatively associated with support for animal testing (Broida et al., 1993;Furnham et al., 2003). Echoing gender differences in empathy (e.g., Christov-Moore et al., 2014;Hoffman, 1977), men and women differ in their empathy for animals (Hills, 1995), speciesist attitudes (Graça et al., 2018) and care for the wellbeing of laboratory animals (Gallup & Beckstead, 1988). In fact, this gender gap in empathy toward animals is noticeable even in veterinary and animal science studies: women express greater concern for the suffering and anguish of animals than their male coworkers (Heleski et al., 2006). ...
There is a large gender gap in support for animal experimentation, with men endorsing this practice more than women. However, little is known about the psychological factors associated with these differences. Drawing on a large and gender-balanced sample (nwomen = 551, nmen = 454), we conducted a cross-sectional survey to examine whether gender differences in empathy, social dominance orientation (SDO), and speciesism mediate gender differences in attitudes toward animal experimentation. Our results indicate that gender differences in empathy and speciesism mediate the link between gender and support for animal experimentation, but SDO does not. An integrative model also confirmed the role of gender differences in dispositional empathy related directly to speciesist attitudes, which as a result were related to attitudes toward animal testing. This research brings new insights into gender differences in the acceptance of animal experimentation and may explain why women are more likely than men to be opposed to this practice.
... Recent work has found similar associations between SDO and prejudice against animals. People who score higher on SDO also score higher on speciesist attitudes (Braunsberger et al., 2021;Caviola et al., 2019;Graça et al., 2018;Hopwood & Bleidorn, 2020). They are more likely to think that hunting and fishing are justified (Hopwood & Bleidorn, 2020), more strongly endorse the use of animals by humans (Hyers, 2006), and are less likely to condemn acts of animal cruelty (Jarmakowski-Kostrzanowski & Radkiewicz, 2021). ...
... Finally, it is unclear how robust the positive association between human-directed and animal-directed prejudice is when controlling for various socio-demographic factors. For example, men and conservatives often show higher levels of prejudice against marginalized groups and prejudice against animals Hodson & Dhont, 2015;Waytz et al., 2019) and it seems like these association are not only due to differences in SDO Graça et al., 2018). The present studies explored (a) how various sociodemographic variables (i.e., gender, age, educational attainment, income, rural vs. urban living environment, religiosity, and political orientation) are related to attitudes, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors related to animal exploitation and (b) whether the link between human-and animaldirected prejudice still emerges when controlling for these variables. ...
... More prejudiced individuals were also more likely to identify as meat eaters and reported eating meat more often and in larger quantities, they were less likely to buy more "ethically produced" meat and less willing to eat meat substitutes at least once a week. Most of these associations (except for feelings of guilt when thinking about meat production and beliefs that meat production is animalfriendly and morally acceptable) remained significant when controlling for a host of sociodemographic variables, many of which have been shown to be related to both prejudice and animal exploitation in the prior work Graça et al., 2018). Thus, the positive relation between individual differences in prejudice and animal exploitation cannot (entirely) be explained by characteristics such as individuals' gender, age, education, or political orientation. ...
People who are prejudiced against one social group also tend to be prejudiced against other social groups—they show generalized prejudice. Many scholars have noted parallels between the exploitation and marginalization of certain social groups (e.g., racism) and the treatment of non-human animals (i.e., speciesism), suggesting that generalized prejudice may even extend across species lines. Two studies tested this hypothesis using large and diverse participant samples and different operationalizations of prejudice. Study 1 (56759 participants from 46 European countries) showed a positive association between prejudice and human supremacy beliefs, a key feature of speciesist ideology. Study 2 (1566 Dutch participants) revealed positive associations between prejudice and a host of attitudes, emotional responses, and behaviors related to the exploitation of animals. These findings support recent theorizing on the common psychological roots (e.g., social dominance orientation) of both human-directed and animal-directed prejudice and attest to the generality of generalized prejudice.
... Previous research has also identified gender differences in moral emotions. Compared to men, women tend to feel more guilt (Ward & King, 2018), experience stronger meat-related disgust (Al-Shawaf et al., 2018;Hoefling et al., 2009;Prokop & Fancovicova, 2010;Schaller, 2016), show greater compassion towards animals and are more concerned with animal welfare and protection (Graça et al., 2018;Herzog et al., 2015;Martens et al., 2019;Phillips et al., 2011;Piazza et al., 2018). Women are also more favourable towards vegetarianism and are more likely to be vegetarian (Forestell & Nezlek, 2018;Graça et al., 2015;Pfeiler & Egloff, 2018;Rosenfeld, 2018). ...
... Women are also more favourable towards vegetarianism and are more likely to be vegetarian (Forestell & Nezlek, 2018;Graça et al., 2015;Pfeiler & Egloff, 2018;Rosenfeld, 2018). Men are typically less willing to reduce their meat consumption (Caviola et al., 2018), are more likely to have defensive beliefs about meat consumption (Graça et al., 2015;Pohjolainen et al., 2015), are more likely to have stronger speciesist points of view and are more likely to consider animals to be inferior to humans (Caviola et al., 2018;Graça et al., 2018). Given these findings, it is important to investigate the influence of gender on moral emotions and dietary choices. ...
... However, only omnivorous women as compared to omnivorous men, experienced more meat-related disgust, used less carnistic beliefs to justify their meat consumption, experienced greater guilt over diet violations, and held more positive attitudes towards animals. Although this corroborates previous findings that women are less accepting of using animals for human purposes (e.g., Graça et al., 2018), it does so only to a certain extent. No significant gender differences were observed within the vegan and vegetarian groups for these variables, and pescatarians only showed a gender effect for attitudes towards animals. ...
Meat eaters and meat abstainers differ in their beliefs and moral emotions related to meat consumption alongside gender differences. Few studies have investigated beliefs and moral emotions in pescatarians and vegans. Little is known about differences in moral emotions and beliefs regarding dairy, eggs, and fish or about speciesist beliefs within and between specific dietary groups. To address this gap, we investigated moral emotions (consumption-related disgust and guilt), attitudes towards animals (Animal Attitudes Scale) and justifying beliefs related to meat (Carnism Inventory), dairy, egg, and fish consumption in omnivores (n = 167), pescatarians (n = 110), vegetarians (n = 116), and vegans (n = 149). Results showed that people who consumed animal-derived products reported lower disgust and guilt and held stronger justifying beliefs about consumption of these products than those who did not consume animal products. All dietary groups significantly differed from each other in their attitudes about using animals for human benefit, with omnivores showing the least positive attitudes towards animals, followed by pescatarians and vegetarians, and with vegans showing the most positive attitudes towards animals. Women experienced greater moral emotions and held fewer justifying beliefs than men within groups where animal products were consumed and related to the animal-based products they consume (i.e., fish for pescatarians and eggs/dairy for vegetarians). These findings emphasise the importance of considering a wider range of animal products, such as eggs, dairy and fish, and dietary groups in order to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the psychological underpinnings of animal product consumption. The results highlight differences between dietary groups in attitudes and moral concern towards animals, which may be important to consider when designing interventions to reduce animal product consumption.
... Empirically, there is evidence that variables across these three different levels correlate with each other, and also with attitudes toward climate and environmental protection, animal exploitation and meat eating. While the SDO concept was developed in the domain of intergroup relations, it appears to be similarly useful in explaining attitudes at the interspecies level, such as attitudes toward animals Graça et al., 2018) and the natural environment (Milfont et al., 2013;Milfont & Sibley, 2014. As noted by Allen et al. (2000, p. 411), the "desire for dominance appears to go beyond the human sphere and into that of animals and nature." ...
... People with higher SDO, on the other hand, tend to objectify animals more and regard them in a more instrumental way. For instance, Graça et al. (2018) showed that SDO as well as lower empathy with people are associated with human supremacy beliefs and favorable attitudes toward animal exploitation. ...
... Our main interest was in the interpersonal level, which has not been examined previously in this context. Regarding empathy with people, our results indicate that earlier findings of its relation with meat consumption (e.g., Preylo & Arikawa, 2008) and attitudes toward animal exploitation (e.g., Graça et al., 2018) are most likely due to the overlap between empathy with animals and with people. Deviating from existing scales, we made a deliberate effort to create an Empathy with Animals scale as similar as possible to the Empathy with People scale. ...
Meat eaters have a more hierarchical, less egalitarian view at the world than vegetarians. This can be manifested in social dominance orientation, at the intergroup level, but also at the interspecies level, yielding more empathy with nonhuman animals, and at the interpersonal level. We examined if interpersonal motives in human-human relationships and empathy with people are associated with frequency of meat eating, using a cross-sectional survey (N = 580). For the motives power and affiliation, no significant relationships emerged, but the self-enhancement motive was positively related to the number of days that participants ate meat. This predicted additional variance over and above variables at the intergroup and interspecies level, such as social dominance orientation and human-animal continuity. Empathy with people was negatively related to meat consumption, but this was explained by its correlation with empathy with animals. Discussion focuses on the importance of the self-enhancement motive in attachment to meat, the symbol of human superiority, as well as resistance to meat refusers.
... Hence, human supremacy is a special case of social dominance orientation (SDO) [37], i.e., the approval of inequality between social groups and group-based dominance that is associated with negative attitudes toward human out-group members [37,38]. Women in general have been found to endorse human supremacy beliefs to a lesser extent because they are more empathic and lower in SDO than men [39]. A study by Dhont and Hodson [39] indicated that people with higher SDO consume more meat due to their greater endorsement of human supremacy beliefs. ...
... Women in general have been found to endorse human supremacy beliefs to a lesser extent because they are more empathic and lower in SDO than men [39]. A study by Dhont and Hodson [39] indicated that people with higher SDO consume more meat due to their greater endorsement of human supremacy beliefs. In addition, human supremacy beliefs are connected to dehumanization, a mechanism of moral disengagement that ascribes less humanity to an out-group [40]. ...
... Additionally, human supremacy beliefs might also be a mechanism of moral disengagement from meat in which vegans and vegetarians differ, as vegans have been found to reject speciesism to a greater extent than vegetarians [42]. In terms of gender differences, we hypothesize that women will endorse human supremacy beliefs less than men, in line with the results from [39]. ...
Most people consume meat regularly but simultaneously claim to be animal lovers, which should lead to a state of cognitive dissonance and cause distress. Against this backdrop, it is important to understand why some people decide to stop consuming meat or completely eschew animal products, while others do not. Research has shown gender and self-regulatory mechanisms as important factors, but the underlying psychological processes require further examination. In total, 3259 vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores completed an online questionnaire about their diet, gender role self-concept, moral disengagement from meat consumption, and human supremacy beliefs. The results showed that male vegans described themselves as more feminine but no less masculine than male omnivores, while no such differences were found in women. Furthermore, omnivores reported the highest moral disengagement from meat consumption, followed by vegetarians and vegans. The same was true of human supremacy beliefs. Moreover, the results showed that not only is diet itself related to differences in human supremacy beliefs but also the motives for this diet, with health and environmental motives being associated with stronger human supremacy beliefs than animal-related motives. These findings present practical implications for animal rights activists, marketing, and the health and education sectors.
... Gender differences have also been observed on empathy, social dominance, and moral disengagement. Women tend to outscore men on empathic concern (Magalhães et al., 2011;Rueckert et al., 2011), and men tend to outscore women both on social dominance orientation (Graça et al., 2018;Nosek et al., 2007) and propensity for moral disengagement (Bandura et al., 2000;Clemente et al., 2019). The following paragraphs present a short conceptual and empirical overview of each of these variables (i.e., empathy, social dominance orientation, and propensity for moral disengagement) in light of the current focal topic. ...
... Empathy is defined as the individuals' ability to understand others' point-of-view, experience others' emotions and to behave compassionately (Geer et al., 2000), and this has been shown to mediate the association between gender and negative attitudes toward vulnerable groups (e.g., Graça et al., 2018). The conceptual rationale is that female socialization processes and gender role expectations emphasize an orientation for attending to others' needs and to be cooperative (Milfont & Sibley, 2016). ...
... This is concerning in light of evidence on the negative consequences of not believing victims of CSA (Antunes & Magalhães, 2019). Previous research has suggested that women are less prone to display negative attitudes toward vulnerable groups, partly because they are more likely to endorse non-hierarchical and egalitarian intergroup relationships (Bäckström & Björklund, 2007;Graça et al., 2018). ...
Research on attitudes toward Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) consistently shows that men are more likely to endorse myths about CSA events, victims and perpetrators, compared to women. Here we present two studies that examine why these gender differences occur. Study one (N = 439) followed a dispositional approach to test the mediating role of empathy, social dominance orientation (SDO) and propensity for moral disengagement in the association between gender and the endorsement of CSA myths. Male participants showed higher levels of SDO and propensity for moral disengagement, and lower empathy, which in turn were associated with greater CSA myths acceptance. Study two (N = 360) followed a situational approach to test these processes using a specific case of CSA. Male participants showed higher levels of SDO and lower empathy, which in turn were associated with lower scores of perceived assault seriousness, victim credibility, perpetrator culpability, and greater victim culpability. Overall, the results suggest that men and women may appraise CSA differently, which can be partly explained by differences in SDO, propensity to morally disengage, and empathy. Furthermore, different cognitive mechanisms may be activated with regard to general appraisals of CSA compared to specific cases of CSA.
... Another personality trait often associated with animal abuse is empathy with people (McPhedran, 2009). It has been proposed that empathy mediates the relationship between gender and attitudes towards animals (Graça et al., 2018). In general, individuals with high levels of empathy toward people are those who care more about the suffering of animals (Komorosky and O'Neal, 2015), especially if they are women, because women are more empathetic than men in relation to both humans and animals (Gómez-Leal et al., 2021). ...
... Most studies on empathy analyze the link between perpetrators' empathy with people and animal abuse (e.g., McPhedran, 2009;Graça et al., 2018;Signal et al., 2018;Wied et al., 2021), but not the specific role of empathy with nature. This latter type of empathy, although it may be related to the first, refers to a different psychological construct (Paul, 2000;Gómez-Leal et al., 2021). ...
Social and academic interest in animal abuse has recently increased thanks to greater awareness of the importance of biodiversity in promoting sustainability. The redefinition of human-animal relationships, in the context of the fight against speciesism and the defense of veganism, has also contributed to this greater attention. Moreover, public awareness of animal rights has strengthened social reactions to violence against animals, though there are still some social sectors that are indifferent to these changes. Thus, better knowledge of the psychological mechanisms underlying reactions to animal abuse could contribute to better informal, social control of such abuse. The main aim of this study is to analyze the relationships between psychopathy, empathy with people, and empathy with nature arising from people’s reactions to protected and domestic animal abuse and illegal dumping. Also, as previous studies have shown differences between men and women, both in animal abuse and in personality traits, thus gender is taken into account when analyzing these relationships. A total of 409 people, resident in a highly environmentally protected territory, participated in this study. They were aged between 18 and 82 years old and 49.9% women. Participants were asked about assigned punishments, as well as the probability of intervening personally and/or calling the police, in relation to ten scenarios, based on press releases, describing one of three types of transgression of environmental laws: abuse of protected animals, abuse of domestic animals or illegal dumping. They also responded to Spanish adaptations of the Inventory of Callous Unemotional Traits, the Basic Empathy Scale, the Dispositional Empathy with Nature Scale, and the Social Desirability Scale. Each participant was randomly given ten scenarios corresponding to just one transgression type but all the personality scales. Results show that people’s reactions were greater for abuse of domestic than protected animals or for illegal dumping, irrespective of gender. Empathy with nature was related to the reaction against animal abuse more than empathy with people and psychopathy. Results are discussed highlighting the need for future research into similarities and differences between animal abuse and other types of environmental offences, which have many victims but no single being suffering.
... In general, women have been found to have higher wildlife protection and mutualism orientation (Hermann et al., 2013;Milfont and Duckitt, 2004;Vaske et al., 2011), and men have higher wildlife use and domination orientation (Hermann et al., 2013;Oerke and Bogner, 2010). Therefore, women are more likely to be empathetic towards animals and see them as moral entities with equal value, while men are more likely to place humans above other animal species, and to value human dominance (Graça et al., 2018). ...
... Further, some previous studies have indicated that women, in general, feel closer to wildlife than men and are more concerned about animal welfare (Dougherty et al., 2003;Graça et al., 2018). For example, women were found to feel more negative personal emotional and psychological impact from lethal wildlife control; there was also a stronger correlation between values, beliefs, attitudes, and these feelings (Dougherty et al., 2003). ...
Gender differences in biospheric value orientation and opinions on wildlife management have the potential to be used as a management tool in wildlife watching settings. In this research note, we build on a dataset from Chauvat et al. (2021) to investigate gender differences in biospheric value orientation and opinions on seal watching management of visitors at seal watching sites post hoc. Questionnaires (n = 597) were collected at three sites in Northwest Iceland. It was found that when genders were compared, women had stronger biospheric value orientations, were more aware of potential anthropogenic impacts on seals, believed to a higher extent that regulations were useful in terms of decreasing impact, and were more positive towards most management actions suggested in the questionnaire. We argue that further understanding of the gender dynamics regarding pro-environmental attitudes may be a valuable element in the context of sustainable wildlife tourism management.
... Cluster 1 combined some sociodemographic characteristics that have been associated with a great concern or sensitivity towards FAW. In several studies, women have shown higher pro-animal welfare attitudes compared to men (Albert, Kota, Boaitey, & Minegishi, 2020;Clark et al., 2016;Estévez-Moreno et al., 2021), very likely due to a social effect on women beliefs towards social dominance, human supremacy, and speciesism (Graça, Calheiros, Oliveira, & Milfont, 2018). Being from an urban setting has also previously been linked to higher FAW concerns in Mexico and Spain (Estévez-Moreno et al., 2021;Miranda-de la Lama et al., 2017). ...
... This cluster grouped a high proportion of men, respondents without higher education and meat-eaters. In previous studies of FAW perceptions and meat consumption, men showed lower levels of empathy towards animals (Graça et al., 2018), had lower awareness of animal welfare responsibility and were inclined to consume more "ethically incorrect" animal products (e. g. foie grass) than women (Blanc, Massaglia, Borra, Mosso, & Merlino, 2020). ...
Consumer attitudes towards farm animal welfare (FAW) are not a one-dimensional phenomenon; they entail various attitudinal and social dimensions related to ethnicity, agri-food culture, ethics, purchasing power and beliefs. Therefore, the study aimed to identify segments of South American consumers of animal products according to their attitudes towards FAW. An online survey was carried out among participants from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia (n = 2852). A factor analysis followed by a hierarchical cluster analysis identified four consumers' segments based on their attitudes towards FAW. The first corresponds to consumers ethically committed to FAW (n = 1323), the second to those committed to farmers and interested in labels (n = 215), the third to consumers interested in FAW and farmers and their efforts towards FAW (n = 993), and the fourth, associated with apathetic consumers (n = 321). Although FAW is a relatively new commercial phenomenon in South America, our results showed that concern for animals may be a universal human value, which can overcome traditional dichotomies between rich-poor or developed-undeveloped countries.
... Individuals who selfidentify as female are likely to express greater environmental protection, while those who self-identify as male are likely to express greater environmental exploitation (e.g., Franzen & Vogl, 2013;Milfont, 2012;Xiao & McCright, 2015;Zelezny et al., 2000). My colleagues and I have examined variables that could explain this sex difference, and our findings indicate that female participants tend to display higher levels of environmental protection because they were higher in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness while lower in SDO compared to male participants (Desrochers et al., 2019;Graça et al., 2018;Jylhä et al., 2016;. Future research should explore this further and examine the extent to which gender identification (not only biological sex) is related to environmental protection (e.g., Calvo-Salguero et al., 2014;Desrochers et al., 2019, Study 3). ...
... Las personas que se autoidentifican como mujeres tienden a mostrar mayor protección ambiental, mientras que los que se auto-identifican como hombres tienden a mostrar mayor explotación ambiental (por ejemplo, Franzen & Vogl, 2013;Milfont, 2012;Xiao & McCright, 2015;Zelezny et al., 2000). Mis colaboradores y yo hemos estudiado variables que podrían explicar esta diferencia sexual, y nuestros resultados muestran que las participantes mujeres tienen a mostrar niveles más altos de protección ambiental porque puntuaban más alto en Agradabilidad y Responsabilidad, pero más bajo en SDO, en comparación con los participantes hombres (Desrochers et al., 2019;Graça et al., 2018;Jylhä et al., 2016;. La investigación futura debería analizar esto en profundidad, y estudiar hasta qué punto la identificación de género (no solo el sexo biológico) se relaciona con la protección ambiental (por ejemplo, Calvo-Salguero et al., 2014;Desrochers et al., 2019, Estudio 3). ...
Differential psychology focuses on how individuals vary in the way they think, feel and act by measuring differences that distinguish them as more similar to themselves over time and across situations than other individuals. In this article I review and discuss available evidence on key individual differences associated with protection and exploitation of the natural environment. The discussion centres on personality traits, basic human values, time perspective and system-justifying ideological orientations. Environmental protection has been shown to be consistently related to higher levels of Openness to Experience and Agreeableness (and somewhat Honesty-Humility) traits, Self-Transcendence and Openness to Change values and future thinking. Conversely, environmental exploitation is consistently related to higher levels of conservative political orientation, Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation. Individual differences research provides useful theoretical information that can have applied benefits in designing communication strategies to bring individuals less prone to protect the natural environment on board. Issues with jangle fallacy (measures with different names might not necessarily assess different things) and directions for future research are also discussed.
... Individuals who selfidentify as female are likely to express greater environmental protection, while those who self-identify as male are likely to express greater environmental exploitation (e.g., Franzen & Vogl, 2013;Milfont, 2012;Xiao & McCright, 2015;Zelezny et al., 2000). My colleagues and I have examined variables that could explain this sex difference, and our findings indicate that female participants tend to display higher levels of environmental protection because they were higher in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness while lower in SDO compared to male participants (Desrochers et al., 2019;Graça et al., 2018;Jylhä et al., 2016;. Future research should explore this further and examine the extent to which gender identification (not only biological sex) is related to environmental protection (e.g., Calvo-Salguero et al., 2014;Desrochers et al., 2019, Study 3). ...
... Las personas que se autoidentifican como mujeres tienden a mostrar mayor protección ambiental, mientras que los que se auto-identifican como hombres tienden a mostrar mayor explotación ambiental (por ejemplo, Franzen & Vogl, 2013;Milfont, 2012;Xiao & McCright, 2015;Zelezny et al., 2000). Mis colaboradores y yo hemos estudiado variables que podrían explicar esta diferencia sexual, y nuestros resultados muestran que las participantes mujeres tienen a mostrar niveles más altos de protección ambiental porque puntuaban más alto en Agradabilidad y Responsabilidad, pero más bajo en SDO, en comparación con los participantes hombres (Desrochers et al., 2019;Graça et al., 2018;Jylhä et al., 2016;. La investigación futura debería analizar esto en profundidad, y estudiar hasta qué punto la identificación de género (no solo el sexo biológico) se relaciona con la protección ambiental (por ejemplo, Calvo-Salguero et al., 2014;Desrochers et al., 2019, Estudio 3). ...
Differential psychology focuses on how people vary in the way they think, feel and act by measuring differences that distinguish individuals as more similar to themselves over time and across situations than others. In this article I review and discuss available evidence on key individual differences associated with protection and exploitation of the natural environment. The discussion centers on personality traits, basic human values, time perspective and system-justifying ideological orientations. Greater environmental protection has been shown to be consistently related to higher levels of Openness to Experience and Agreeableness traits (and somewhat Honesty-Humility), Self-Transcendence and Openness to Change values, and future thinking. In contrast, greater environmental exploitation is consistently related to higher levels of conservative political orientation, Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). Research examining individual differences provides useful theoretical information that can have applied benefits in designing communication strategies to bring individuals less prone to protect the natural environment on board. Issues with jangle fallacy (measures with different names might not necessarily assess different things) and direction for future research are also discussed.
... Studies including [65][66][67][68] have revealed that females care more for the environment compared to males, often because of gendered roles and socialization practices within home. In the domestic setup, females are said to be the regular water managers [69]. ...
Due to climate change and increased urbanisation, the current level of freshwater withdrawals and corresponding water usage in Uganda has increased, affecting the availability of these resources and becoming a concern. Education can play a crucial role in providing support to and training students on sustainable water use, both at home and in relation to school activities. Therefore, it is imperative that the education system develops actions, approaches and materials to achieve this goal. The paper assesses the current state of existing Ugandan education on this subject, by identifying the water-related topics currently featured in the curriculum at different class levels, with the aid of questionnaires conducted in four schools in Uganda. Three questionnaires (one for primary school pupils, one for secondary school pupils and one for teachers) were designed for collecting targeted data, and thematic analysis was adopted to analyse the data collected. The results revealed important insights regarding students’ behaviours towards water usage at home. They also revealed that water sustainability topics are delivered in the science curriculum at the primary level, as opposed to geography at the secondary level, confirming that overall, there is a lack of integrated practical teaching incorporated within the courses currently taught in Ugandan schools.
... Furthermore, the sociodemographic characteristics of actors should be considered, as such characteristics often determine perceptions toward any species (Cortés-Avizanda et al., 2022). For example, women are more concerned than men about the well-being of wildlife in the natural environment (Chauvat et al., 2023;Graça et al., 2018) or that younger people are more affectionate toward animals than older people (Cronin et al., 2022;Kellert, 1993). ...
Managing human-wildlife conflicts (HWC) in human-dominated habitats is an important issue in wildlife conservation. Understanding and addressing local people's attitudes and behaviours toward HWC is thought to be imperative for successful human-wildlife coexistence. Despite substantial research and conservation resources being invested to study, protect, and manage HWC globally, research on human perceptions of wildlife is mostly done in silos. Realising the lack of scholarly investigations that focus on such conflicts in urban areas by including perceptions of urban residents, we have made the first step, through a systematic review, to identify progress, gaps and future directions of urban wildlife conflict research. Reviewing all studies published globally (n = 124), we identified nuisance urban wildlife and associated conflicts reported by human residents. The findings revealed that most studies, largely focusing on mammals, were conducted in North America. Based on diet, among the 165 trophic groups studied, the majority were omnivores (n = 67), closely followed by carni-vores (n = 50) and herbivores (n = 40). Within vertebrate taxa, bear species (brown, black and sloth bear; Ursus spp., Melursus ursinus) were the most conflictual followed by grey wolf (Canis lupus) and coyote (Canis latrans). The lack of longitudinal research to understand the trends and shifts in urban wildlife population and changes in human perception and attitudes was a key finding. Therefore, if research is not supplemented by long-term follow-up studies, the resolution of HWC in urban areas will be under evaluated. Furthermore, researchers should consider integrating quantitative and qualitative research methods, such as in-depth or focus group interviews , to understand motivations or perceptions to present a holistic picture for urban wildlife conservation. Perceptions may shift over time, and the human dimension of wildlife may serve as an ecological indicator of ecosystem status, providing valuable insight into how management measures will be accepted by citizens, which is critical for their success.
... Women, in fact, because they can give life, they show a natural propension for transcendence (what lies before, after and beyond our living experience), while men are more prone to immanence, or the reality we inhabit. Anyway, thanks to the contribution of female thinkers and scientists, the broader aspect of environment concern was introduced in many studies [14], and other territories were considered, such as the prevalence of interpersonal aggression and the socioeconomic status in determining predispositions [15]. However, as a matter of fact, men continue today to be more disposed to harm nonhuman (and human) animals than women [16,17]. ...
The reasoning about the right and wrong ways to consider, use and treat animals is the focus of animal ethics. For a long time, animal rights have largely escaped anthropological attention. Only recently, however, thanks to new perspectives its assignment is to go beyond the human. This is because we must change the inner assumptions of our basic concepts on human and non-human ethics if we want to deconstruct the human/animal dichotomy. The author reflects on the different theories currently found in literature and the fact that none of them expressed so far are completely accepted, probably due to the different dispositions towards the term ethics. Some of the various theoretical alternatives recently proposed by Authors belonging to different disciplines are discussed in the paper.
... A consistent finding in the literature is that men have higher SDO than women Sidanius et al., 2000Sidanius et al., , 2006Sidanius et al., , 1994a. This finding is not only robust (Pratto et al., 2013), but also consequential because it mediates or moderates many sex differences in the literature, such as conservatism (Wilson & White, 2010), support for animal exploitation (Graça et al., 2018), denial of anthropogenic climate change (Jylhä et al., 2016), and environmentalism (Milfont & Sibley, 2016). Thus, it can be argued that explaining sex differences in SDO is an important theoretical goal for both Social Dominance Theory and other psychological theories of gender (e.g., Eagly & Wood, 1999;Glick et al., 2000). ...
A widely documented sex difference in political psychology is that men have higher social dominance orientation than women. Social Dominance Theory claims that this phenomenon reflects the different adaptational challenges men and women faced in the evolutionary history of the human species. Thus, according to the invariance hypothesis, all things being equal, men should have a higher level of social dominance orientation than women. The biological emphasis of Social Dominance Theory was criticized by Social Identity and System Justification theorists, who argued that gender differences stem from social and contextual factors. In this paper, I systematically reviewed the studies that test the invariance hypothesis or alternative explanations of sex differences in social dominance orientation. To this, I searched two online databases for relevant studies published after the invariance hypothesis is proposed and identified 21 studies in 17 articles. The literature indicates that there is considerable evidence that contradicts the invariance hypothesis. Age, academic major, gender identification, gender roles and stereotypes, and intergroup status emerged as alternative explanatory variables. I discussed the implications of these findings for Social Dominance Theory and its alternatives.
... On average, for the female respondents, the livestock industry causes more ethical and environmental problems and women agreed more that reducing meat consumption is a good solution compared to men (P < 0.001, Table 1) with a significant gender x country interaction (P < 0.001, Fig. 1). Different orientations in social dominance and empathy have been discussed at length to explain the gender difference (Graça, Calheiros, Oliveira, & Milfont, 2018). Women have less faith in technological solutions and are more willing to change, whereas men tend to eat more meat and are less willing to reduce their meat consumption (Dibb & Fitzpatrick, 2014). ...
With the global meat market growing and intensive livestock farming systems increasing, the impacts of livestock are a growing concern among consumers, further influencing their meat consumption. Understanding consumer perceptions of livestock production is therefore a key issue. This study surveyed 16,803 respondents in France, Brazil, China, Cameroon and South Africa to investigate the different perceptions of the ethical and environmental impacts of livestock production among consumer segments in different countries based on their sociodemographic characteristics. On average, the current respondents in Brazil and China and/or who consume little meat, are female, not in the meat sector and/or more educated, are more likely to think that livestock meat production causes serious ethical and environmental problems; while those in China, France and Cameroon and/or who consume little meat and/or are women, younger, not in the meat sector, and/or more educated, are more likely to agree that reducing meat consumption could be a good solution to these problems. Additionally, an affordable price and sensory quality are the main drivers of food purchases for the current respondents. In conclusion, sociodemographic factors have significant effects on consumer perception of livestock meat production and meat consumption habits. Perceptions of the challenges facing livestock meat production differ between countries in different geographic regions based on social, economic, cultural contexts and dietary habits.
... Children's sex Sex differences among children are not only reflected in physical characteristics, but often in psychological characteristics as well. Females show greater empathy for the natural environment, pay more attention to its conservation (Graça et al., 2018) and also engage in more environmental behaviors (Richardson & Sheffield, 2015ime outdoors than females (Larson et al., 2019), etc. Although there are quite a few sex differences in children, and Krettenauer et al. (2019) surveyed 363 adolescents (aged 9-21 years) in China and found that older adolescents were less connected to nature, but this study found no sex differences in children's nature connectedness, which is inconsistent with the findings of most studies on children's nature connectedness that consider sex mentioned in the introduction part. ...
... Una conclusión de este estudio es que las concepciones determinan las actitudes y prácticas hacia una respuesta educativa inclusiva con respecto a las personas con discapacidad (Hockings et al., 2012;Van Jaarsveldt y Ndeya-Ndereya, 2015). En otras investigaciones se ha encontrado que la actitud hacia la discapacidad se relaciona con variables como el género, la formación o las relaciones con personas con discapacidad y la experiencia profesional (Graça et al., 2018;Polo et al., 2020). En este sentido, las mujeres parecen tener actitudes más positivas hacia la discapacidad que los hombres (Li et al., 2012;Novo-Corti et al., 2015). ...
En el contexto de la educación y, concretamente, en la etapa universitaria, la presencia de personas con discapacidad en la Educación Superior es hoy en día una realidad, tanto en España como en otros contextos internacionales. En la actualidad, existe un movimiento global que reivindica el derecho al acceso, permanencia y éxito de estudiantes no tradicionales, entre los que se encuentran las personas con discapacidad. Este estudio pretende presentar y analizar las concepciones de 676 universitarios (grado y posgrado) de diferentes áreas de conocimiento de la Universidad de Sevilla (España) sobre
la discapacidad. Se ha utilizado una metodología cuantitativa con la aplicación de la Escala Intercultural de Conceptos de Discapacidad (EICD). Los resultados mostraron una preponderancia de la concepción social de discapacidad,
seguida de los aspectos biológicos/médicos. Se observaron
diferencias en relación con las variables analizadas, universitarios
más jóvenes y aquellos que realizaban estudios de posgrado señalaron la prevalencia de afirmaciones vinculadas al modelo social de discapacidad. No se encontraron diferencias significativas entre los y las participantes con y sin discapacidad. Entre las conclusiones, podemos destacar la relevancia de la comprensión de la discapacidad como un fenómeno social para la oferta de prácticas psicosociales y psicoeducativas inclusivas. Esta decisión revela entonces que, aceptar la revisión de los paradigmas sociales para resignificar conceptos en la concepción social de la discapacidad, es un camino posible por el reconocimiento de las diferencias que constituyen lo humano.
... Non-human species are ubiquitous to human life and permeate a diversity of social contexts by offering, among other things, entertainment, leisure, and companionship (Amiot and Bastian 2015). According to Graça et al. (2018), women are typically more concerned than men about the well-being of non-human animals and the environment. Also, women are more selective than men (Trivers 1972), and often have marked preferences and requirements for certain physical traits (e.g. ...
Visitor interests can be crucial to understanding humans’ connectedness in nature. We analysed the relationship between people and flora and fauna species (native and exotic) through YouTube videos of a forest region (southern Patagonia) posted by visitors from different parts of the world. We characterised the species of flora and fauna observed by the visitors and calculated the time that appears in the videos as a proxy for their connectedness to biodiversity. The biodiversity observations were contrasted against visitors’ sociodemographic characteristics (age and gender) by the Van der Waerden test and multivariate analyses. We created a sociogram that showed connections among species through visitor links to these data. Our results reveal different degrees of relationship between species, where some exotic ones were more preferred than natives (Van der Waerden test p = <0.100). Differences in the linkage to the flora and fauna species were related to the age and gender of the visitors. Visitor interests are modulated by access to ecosystem types (e.g. forests) and species’ commonness/rarity and docility. Gender and age had less influence on the interests than expected, but it determined differential values on native and exotic diversity. Three groups of species emerged from the sociogram based on the visitor connectedness to flora and fauna species, evidencing high connections among native trees (Nothofagus spp.), exotic beavers (Castor canadensis), and native geese and ducks (e.g. Chloephaga picta). The novel approach utilised provides valuable data that can be used to test the influence of gender and age on the different biodiversity interests. This information has potential applications for nature conservation by detecting unsponsored biodiversity and ecosystem types that could be promoted, capturing the visitor interests, and improving the offer of visitor activities according to gender/age observations.
... In psychological theorizing, the Social Dominance Human-Animal Relations Model (SD-HARM; Dhont et al., 2016) posits that social dominance orientation (SDO), a preference for group-based dominance and opposition to equality (Pratto et al., 1994), is the key underlying ideological factor explaining why prejudicial human intergroup and human-animal attitudes are significantly related. In support of this model, research has shown that those higher on SDO not only express more prejudices towards a range of human outgroups (Kteily et al., 2012;Meeusen & Dhont, 2015;Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), they also tend to be more speciesist (Caviola et al., 2019;Dhont et al., , 2016Graça et al., 2018). Critically, after accounting for SDO, the positive associations between human outgroup prejudices (i.e., ethnic and gender-based prejudice) and speciesist attitudes become weaker or non-significant (Dhont et al., , 2016. ...
Images of sexualized women depicted as animals or alongside meat are routinely used in advertising in Western culture. Philosophers and feminist scholars have long theorized that such imagery reflects the lower status of both women and animals (vs. men) in society and argued that prejudiced attitudes towards women (i.e., sexism) and animals (i.e., speciesism) are interconnected, with meat‐eating as a core symbol of masculinity. Addressing these key ideas from ecofeminist theory, we review the psychological evidence on the associations between sexism, speciesism, meat, and masculinity. Research on the animalistic dehumanization of women provides evidence that sexism and speciesism are psychologically entangled and rooted in desires for group‐based dominance and inequality. Furthermore, research on the symbolic value of meat corroborates its masculine value expressing dominance and power, and suggests that men who abstain from meat consumption (e.g., vegans) are feminized and devalued, particularly by those higher in sexism. We conclude that a greater recognition of the interconnected nature of patriarchal gender relations and practices of animal exploitation, including meat‐eating, can help in efforts to improve the status of both women and animals.
... Therefore, it is more difficult for boys to form good peer relationships, and they more prone to cognitive biases due to the lack of interpersonal support (McMahon et al., 2009). In summary, females tend to outscore males on empathic concern (Magalhães et al., 2011;Rueckert et al., 2011), and males tend to outscore females both on social dominance orientation (Graça et al., 2018;Nosek et al., 2007) and propensity for moral disengagement (Bandura et al., 2000;Clemente et al., 2019). In the traditional division of gender roles in China, males were dominant and females were more dependent on males, so under this premise, families were more demanding in raising boys, and under the traditional concept of "strict" education, parents may intimidate and interfere more with boys. ...
Purpose
The association between childhood psychological maltreatment and adolescents’ relational aggression is receiving growing attention. However, the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying the association remain largely unknown. This study explores the link between childhood psychological maltreatment and relational aggression, examining whether moral disengagement mediates this association and the potential moderating effect of gender.
Methods
948 Chinese adolescents aged 9 to 19 years old (493 boys, 448 girls) participated in this research. Adolescents were recruited through cluster-stratified sampling to complete scales measuring childhood psychological maltreatment, moral disengagement, and relational aggression.
Results
We found that childhood psychological maltreatment was positively correlated with adolescents’ moral disengagement and relational aggression; moral disengagement was also positively correlated with relational aggression. Moral disengagement mediated the effect of psychological maltreatment on relational aggression. The relationship between childhood psychological maltreatment and moral disengagement was moderated by gender, with a larger moderating effect for boys than for girls.
Conclusion
The findings from this study’s moderated mediation model suggest that educators should pay more attention to the childhood psychological maltreatment of adolescents with moral disengagement, particularly boys, so that they can provide more appropriate interventions.
... Further, De Backer and Hudders (2015) also found that meat eaters place more importance on binding moral foundations (i.e., Loyalty, Authority/Respect) than vegetarians. Also, it has been suggested that omnivorous eating patterns are linked to social dominance orientation and also partly to authoritarianism (Becker, et al., 2019;Dhont et al., 2016;Dhont & Hodson, 2014;Graça et al., 2018;Hamilton, 2006;Veser et al., 2015). More specifically, social dominance orientation is associated with legitimizing meat eating via human supremacy beliefs (Becker et al., 2019), which implies an increased emphasis on the legitimacy of natural hierarchies. ...
In the current article, we explore and compare the moral-foundations-profile of vegetarians, vegans, and meat eaters and investigate how it is related to real-world behavior. Results of two surveys demonstrate a link between eating behavior, moral foundations, environmental behavior, and feminist ideals. We demonstrate that vegans place greater value on individualizing foundations (i.e., Harm and Fairness) and meat eaters on binding foundations (i.e., Authority and Loyalty), while vegetarians fall in between these poles. In addition, we observed that in other behavioral domains requiring moral assessment (e.g., sustainable behavior, fair trade shopping), people act in accordance with the moral foundations matching their dietary choice as well. We propose that the psychological basis of diet choice is embedded in the broader framework of moral foundations theory and that eating behavior is not a psychologically encapsulated domain but intertwined with other domains of moral behavior.
... The underlying explanation for gender differences in these attitudes is not well understood (Apostol et al. 2013); indeed, the gender gap varies: in attachment to companion animals the difference is small, whereas in relation to animal rights activism it is large (Herzog 2007). One of the interesting explanations could be underlying differences in empathic and social dominance orientations (Graça et al. 2018). Thus, it could be expected that attitudes towards individual species might also reflect gender differences that are related to the risks, utility, and aesthetics of the species. ...
Most of biodiversity is not considered charismatic and from human’s perspective it can be indifferent, problematic, harmful, disgusting, or dangerous. Secondary school students’ attitudes towards an unloved species and how it relates to their feelings of disgust in the context of a biology course were studied during a citizen science project where Finnish secondary school students surveyed the occurrence of urban rats. Questionnaire data were collected on four scales: attitude towards rats, interest in learning about environment, disgust, and liking biology as a school subject. It was modeled with an item response theory approach by including respondents’ age and gender. Higher age correlated with a more positive attitude towards the environment and lower level of disgust. Surprisingly, the students with more positive attitude towards rats also not only had a higher liking biology as a school subject and positive attitude towards the environment, but also a higher level of general disgust. The results suggest that disgust in general is not detrimental in learning and appreciating unloved others as parts of biodiversity. The results also raise questions on how personal attitudes towards the individual species relate to attitudes toward more abstract concept of biodiversity or the environment.
... Cercetări recente din psihologie și sociologie confirmă corelația strânsă care se stabilește între femei și animale în termeni de obiectualizare și consum: indivizii care tind să obiectualizeze femeile și susțin rolurile de gen tradiționale, conform măsurătorilor ce indică atitudinile sexiste, manifestă atitudine favorabilă consumului de carne și nefavorabilă animalelor în general (Allcorn and Ogletree 2018, Randler et al. 2021, Graça et al. 2018. În acord cu teza opresiunilor interconectate (Wyckoff 2014), aceste cercetări susțin empiric argumentul existenței unor ierarhii de putere care se intersectează la nivelul genului și al speciei (Twine 2010.) ...
Lynn et al., (2019) accused fellow scientists of misrepresenting free-roaming cats
(Felis catus) by framing them as a global threat to biodiversity, rather than a
localised threat to specific ecosystems. These authors asserted that the narrative
created a ‘moral panic’ over free-roaming cats, which is escalated by emotive
journalistic pieces read by audiences around the world. To test this empirically, I
performed a thematic discourse analysis of user comments responding to five
news articles, a magazine, and a YouTube video related to the topic of freeroaming cats. The discourses examined flow between conservationists, the media,
and the public, and reflect the confused and convoluted ways in which people think
about cats. Here I discuss how well the data fits the moral panic theory. I analyse
how labels such as ‘feral’ serve to ‘other’ cats, rendering them objects of distain
and creating ‘folk devils’ that are deemed more killable than beloved companion
animals of the same species.
... There has been a great deal of research on human empathy towards animals (Graça et al., 2018;Serpell & Paul, 2011). Most recently, Figueredo et al. (2022a) examined a concentric circles model of empathy towards nonhuman animals with three outward radiating animal categories or circles, including Kith-Kin, then Domestic Animal, and then Wild Animal. ...
Although multiple publications have addressed the nexus between individual differences and attitudes towards nonhuman animals, fewer studies have discussed the rise of human-animal interactions, in particular with domesticated mammals, through an evolutionary lens. Two evolutionary hypotheses, the Symbiotic and Neurocognitive hypothesis, provide complementary predictions regarding the evolution of these cognitive and emotional mechanisms. According to the Symbiotic hypothesis, the longer the time humans have had to interact symbiotically with domesticated the animals, the greater their empathy towards them. Alternatively, the Neurocognitive hypothesis argues that human empathy directed at animals increases in response to the neural and cognitive complexity of nonhuman animals. To test these hypotheses, the present study reported questionnaire data from 322 Southwestern university students. These psychometric instruments measured the participants' levels of cognitive empathy (the attribution of mental states to animals), emotional empathy (emotional concern about animals), and harm avoidance (reluctance to mistreat animals) when rating 13 domesticated mammals. The species' times since domestication and relative brain sizes were then used as predictors of cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and harm avoidance. The results of Linear Mixed and Hierarchical General Linear Cascade Models found empirical support for the Symbiotic and Neurocognitive hypotheses.
... But intolerant or at best exploitive attitudes towards carnivores do not exist in isolation. They are a natural derivative of carnism, belief in the superiority of humans, and a corresponding tendency to discount the sentience of animals (Anderson et al. 2007, Dhont et al. 2016, Caviola et al. 2018, Graça et al. 2018, Manfredo et al. 2018, Becker et al. 2019. Of more direct relevance to politics of carnivore management in the United States, hunters are far more likely than the rest of Americans to identify as politically conservative and as Republicans (Responsive Management 2006, Chesapeake Beach Consulting 2012, Cooper et al. 2015. ...
For perhaps 30,000 years grizzly bears ranged throughout the mountains and riparian areas of what would eventually become the southwestern United States. But in a remarkably short 50-year period between 1860 and 1910 Anglo-Americans killed roughly 90% of the grizzly bears in 90% of the places they once lived. Most of the remaining grizzlies had been killed by the 1930s.
This report provides a detailed account of natural history, relations with humans, and current and future prospects for grizzly bears of the Southwest, emphasizing the millennia prior to ascendance of Anglo-Americans. The report’s narrative is essentially chronological, starting with deep history spanning the late Pleistocene up through arrival of European colonists (Section 3.1); the period of Spanish and Mexican dominance (Section 3.2); and then the period of terminal grizzly bear extirpations that began with the political and military dominance of
Anglo-Americans (Section 3.3). Section 4 examines current environmental conditions and related prospects for restoring grizzly bears to the Southwest. Section 5 completes the chronological arc by forecasting some of what
the future might hold, with implications for both grizzly bears and humans.
The background provided in Section 2 offers a synopsis of grizzly bear natural history as well as a summary of foods and habitats that were likely important to grizzlies. Throughout the Holocene there was a remarkable concentration of diverse high-quality bear foods in highlands of the Southwest, notably in an arc from the San Francisco Peaks of Arizona southeast along the Coconino Plateau and Mogollon Rim to a terminus in the White, Mogollon, and Black Range Mountains in New Mexico. Additional high-quality habitat existed in the Sacramento, San Juan, Jemez, and Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico and adjacent Colorado.
Grizzlies in the Southwest survived remarkable extremes of climate and habitats for perhaps as long as 100,000 years. They also survived substantial variation in human-propagated impacts that culminated in the Crisis of 875-1425 C.E.—a period typified by episodic drought and the highest human population densities prior to recent times. In contrast to relatively benevolent attitudes among indigenous populations, there is little doubt that the terminal toll taken on grizzly bears by Anglo-Americans after 1850 C.E was driven largely by a uniquely lethal
combination of intolerance and ecological dynamics entrained by the eradication or diminishment of native foods and the substitution of human foods, notably livestock, that catalyzed conflict.
More positively, the analysis presented here of current habitat productivity, fragmentation, and remoteness—as well as regulations, laws, and human attitudes—reveals ample potential for restoration of grizzlies to the Southwest, including three candidate Restoration Area Complexes: the Mogollon, San Juan, and Sangre de Cristo, capable of supporting around 620, 425, and 280 grizzlies each. Major foreseeable challenges for those wishing to restore grizzly bears to these areas include sanitation of human facilities, management of livestock depredation, education of big game hunters, coordination of management, and fostering of accommodation among rural residents. Climate change promises to compound all of these challenges, although offset to an uncertain extent by prospective increases in human tolerance.
But the evolutionary history of grizzly bears also provides grounds for optimism about prospective restoration. Grizzly bears have survived enormous environmental variation spanning hundreds of thousands of years, including many millennia in the Southwest. Grizzlies survived not only the inhospitable deeps of the Ice Ages in Asia and Beringia, but also the heat and drought of the Altithermal on this continent. It was only highly-lethal Anglo-Americans that drove them to extinction in the Southwest, which is why human attitudes—more than anything else—will likely determine prospects for restoring grizzly bears.
... For example, previous studies have shown that, compared to pictures adopted in our study, videos are more ecologically valid to arouse empathy response [20]. Additionally, compared to emotionally neutral portraits adopted in the current study, stimuli focusing on the painful or happy condition of the objects may have a stronger effect on arousing emotional empathy [12]. ...
... Individuals who are female or have more vegans and vegetarians in their social circle reported greater felt ambivalence. Interestingly, the gender difference holds above the effect of gender on meat consumption indicated in previous research [56,[91][92][93], suggesting that gender could influence felt ambivalence due to gender differences in coping strategies like moral disengagement. The effect of social context is in line with previous research on interpersonal predictors of ambivalence [33,34] and highlights that sociability could be a crucial elicitor of meat ambivalence. ...
An increasing number of people are concerned about eating meat, despite enjoying doing so. In the present research, we examined whether the desire to resolve this ambivalence about eating meat leads to a reduction in meat consumption. Our model of ambivalence-motivated meat reduction proposes that the pervasive nature of evaluative conflict motivates meat avoidance, and we highlight two potential mechanisms involved: the anticipation of ambivalence reduction through behavioral change, and information seeking for contents that facilitate meat reduction. Study 1 drew on a cross-sectional 6-day food diary with 7485 observations in a quota sample to investigate why meat-related ambivalence arises and to demonstrate the correlation of ambivalence with meat reduction. Two experiments investigated the causal direction of this association by showing that ambivalence-induced discomfort motivated participants to eat less meat when they introspected on their preexisting incongruent evaluations (Study 2 and 3), which was mediated by the aforementioned mechanisms involved (Study 3; preregistered). The studies utilized diverse samples from Germany, England, and the US (total N = 1192) and support the proposed model by indicating that behavioral change is an important coping strategy to resolve ambivalent discomfort in the context of meat consumption. Our model of ambivalence-motivated meat reduction contributes to theorizing on the consequences of ambivalence and the psychology of (not) eating meat.
... Additionally, this segment may represent opinion holders with substantial purchasing power, traits that may influence changes in production practices. Consistent with the more negative attitude scores of females compared to males in this study, it has been shown that women tend to have higher concern about animal welfare and contentious livestock production practices compared to males [10,47,71]. The changing role of women in society may explain in part the growth in societal concern with animal welfare in both industrialized and emerging countries [4]. ...
Farrowing crates are the most common housing for lactating sows throughout the world, despite known public opposition to housing systems that deprive animals’ freedom to move. This study aimed to investigate Brazilian citizens’ attitudes towards three farrowing housing systems (crates, loose pens, and outdoors). Data were obtained via an online questionnaire containing open- and close-ended questions. Participants’ (n = 1171) attitudes were most negative towards the crates and most positive towards outdoor farrowing, and positively correlated with perceived sows’ quality of life. Participants overwhelmingly rejected the use of farrowing crates, and most supported a proposal to move from farrowing crates to loose pens, even when informed that this entailed an increased risk of piglets’ mortality. Participants’ views were underpinned by concerns about sows’ freedom of movement, behavioral freedom and naturalness, and the belief that it is possible to develop and manage housing that prevents piglet crushing that does not involve confining the sow. Furthermore, loose farrowing pens may not fully address all concerns expressed by participants regarding farrowing housing, which included the possibility of allowing sows to socialize and express maternal behaviors. We conclude that maintaining farrowing crates may erode the pig industry’s social license.
... This research is consistent with a broader program of research implicating conservative political ideology in the exploitation of animals (Graça et al., 2018) and the natural world (Milfont et al., 2013). Individuals who align with a conservative political ideology, and in particular those endorsing SDO and RWA, are more likely to deny climate change and hold less proenvironmental attitudes (Hornsey et al., 2016;Stanley & Wilson, 2019). ...
Those on the political right engage in greater meat consumption and animal exploitation than their left-wing counterparts. Previous research suggests this is because they view vegetarianism as threatening the nation’s dietary customs and economy. Across two studies, I extend this concept of “vegetarianism threat” by showing that it separates into two distinct dimensions of concern: cultural (symbolic) threats and economic (realistic) threats. The resultant multidimensional scale allows a finer grained understanding of the roots of ideology-based threat responses to meat-free movements. Together, results implicate symbolic concerns as the key element of vegetarianism threat contributing to negative attitudes towards meat abstention and its proponents.
... Children are more willing than adults to grant moral status to non-humans (Wilks et al., 2021). Moreover, women (Caviola et al., 2019;Graça et al., 2018) and liberals (Waytz et al., 2019) are more morally expansive. In perhaps the most extensive study on this topic, Crimston and colleagues (2016) found that a range of psychological factors were associated with moral expansiveness-including empathic concern, identification with all of humanity, and endorsement of certain moral foundations (harm and care vs. loyalty and purity). ...
People’s treatment of others—humans, animals, or other targets—often depends on whether they think the entity is worthy of moral consideration. Recent work has begun to examine which factors determine whether an entity is included in people’s moral circle. Here, we rely on multilevel modeling to map the variance components of the moral circle. We examine how much variance in moral concern is explained by who is being judged (i.e., between-target differences), by who is making the judgment (i.e., between-judge differences), and by their interaction. Two studies with participants from the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia (N = 836) show that all three components explain substantial amounts of variance in judgments of moral concern. Few cross-country differences emerged. Thus, to accurately predict when people grant moral standing to a target, characteristics of the target, characteristics of the judge, and their interaction need to be considered.
... Indeed, conservative ideologies, alongside gender, tended to be the strongest predictor of omnivore diets (relative to both vegetarian and vegan diets), whereas personality, subjective health, and protecting New Zealand's native species were weaker and inconsistent predictors of dietary behaviour. These findings corroborate past research that has identified a positive association between gender (men), RWA and SDO with meat consumption/animal exploitation (e.g., Allen et al., 2000;Dhont & Hodson, 2014;Graça, Calheiros, Oliveira, & Milfont, 2018;Herzog, 2015). Although environmental efficacy was a weaker predictor than conservatism of vegetarian (vs. ...
Concerns over potential negative effects of excessive meat consumption on both the environment and personal health, coupled with long-standing debates over animal rights, have motivated research on the prevalence and predictors of plant-based versus meat-based diets. Yet few studies have examined longitudinal trends in dietary behaviours using large national samples. We address this gap by examining the prevalence, predictors, and annual change in the self-reported dietary behaviour of a large national probability sample of New Zealand adults (categorised as omnivore, vegetarian, or vegan; Ns = 12,259-50,964). Consistent with our pre-registered hypotheses, omnivore was the most prevalent dietary category (94.1%). Moreover, higher levels of conservative ideologies (i.e., political conservatism, Right-Wing Authoritarianism, and Social Dominance Orientation), lower disgust sensitivity, and lower subjective health predicted having an omnivore (vs. vegetarian or vegan) diet. Longitudinal analyses further revealed that the probability of shifting from an omnivore diet to a vegetarian or vegan diet over a one-year period was low, and that veganism was the least stable dietary category. Both gender (men) and political conservatism predicted lower probabilities of transitioning from meat to no-meat diets over time.
... Demographic factors, such as gender, age, educational level, or socioeconomic status are associated with Animal Welfare Attitudes [2,3]. Previous work across many countries has revealed gender differences with girls and women expressing higher pro-animal welfare attitudes than boys and men in many studies, review papers and in a meta-analysis of the literature [2,[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. ...
Animal Welfare Attitudes (AWA) can be defined as the attitudes of humans
towards the welfare of animals. Although AWA has been previously associated with demographic
factors as gender, one of the main limitations is that few studies applied robust psychometric
questionnaire scales. Moreover, some evidence of cross-cultural variations in AWA have been
reported although limited by the reduced number of countries being examined. To overcome these
limitations, a survey aimed at assessing the gender differences in AWA in university students living
in 22 nations, based on a questionnaire having undergone psychometric testing (i.e., the Composite
Respect for Animals Scale Short version, CRAS-S), was carried out. To this end, the CRAS-S was
administered to 7914 people (5155 women, 2711 men, 48 diverse) alongside a questionnaire on
demographic information and diet. Moreover, the gender inequality index, based on indicators
as completion of secondary education, was computed. The main results showed that diet was
significantly related to AWA; more in detail, higher AWA was observed in vegans compared to
omnivores. Moreover, gender differences in AWA have been reported, with women referring higher
AWA compared to men. In addition, to the decreasing of gender inequality, gender differences in
AWA increased.
... Traditionally masculine gender roles entail social dominance, aggression, and emotional suppression (Bem, 1974;Brody, 2000), which may beget unfavorable outcomes. For example, having a strong social dominance orientation may underlie animal mistreatment and environmentally unsustainable behavior (Graça, Calheiros, Oliveira, & Milfont, 2018;Dhont, Hodson, Costello, & MacInnis, 2014;Milfont et al., 2018;Milfont & Sibley, 2014). Thus, even if effective at reducing men's meat consumption, validating traditional masculinity in advocating for plant-based food consumption may have other downsides for human-animal relations and environmental well-being. ...
Understanding gender differences in meat consumption can help strengthen efforts to improve the sustainability of eating patterns. Compared to women, men eat more meat and are less open to becoming vegetarian. Simply considering between-gender differences, however, may overlook meaningful within-gender heterogeneity in how masculine and feminine identities associate with eating behavior. Distinguishing between specific types of meat is also important, given that some meats (e.g., beef) pose greater challenges to sustainability than do other meats. Through a highly powered, preregistered study (N = 1706), we investigated the predictive value of traditional gender role conformity and gender identity centrality for meat consumption frequency and openness to becoming vegetarian. Greater conformity to traditional gender roles predicted more frequent consumption of beef and chicken and lower openness to vegetarianism among men but offered no predictive value among women. No effects were observed for pork or fish consumption. Among women, greater traditional gender role conformity and gender identity centrality were associated with openness to becoming vegetarian for health reasons. Among men, lower traditional gender role conformity was associated with openness to becoming vegetarian for environmental reasons. These findings suggest that understanding meat consumption calls for greater distinctions between specific types of meat as well as deeper consideration of within-gender heterogeneity.
... Finally, as ancillary concerns, we tested the role of individual characteristics such as gender and diet alongside pet attachment. We expected women and meat avoiders (e.g., vegetarians) to overall exhibit more positive attitudes toward animals than men and meat consumers as past research has consistently found that women and meat avoiders hold more empathic attitudes toward animals (e.g., Graça et al., 2018;Herzog et al., 1991;Knight et al., 2004;Knight & Barnett, 2008;Piazza et al., 2015). ...
Positive relationships with pets can sometimes foster more positive judgments of other animals. The present study sought to examine the scope of this “pets as ambassadors” effect in relation to four meaningful animal categories (companion, farmed, predator, and pest) derived from the Animal Images Database (Animal.ID). The Animal.ID contains ratings from 376 Portuguese individuals on pet attachment and several dimensions related to animal attributes and moral concern for 120 different animals, which offered insights into the scope and nature of the “pets as ambassadors” effect. Pet attachment was related positively to ethical concern for animals and lower levels of speciesism. The relationship between pet attachment and animal attributions were expressed, beyond companion animals, most consistently for predators and farmed animals, and least of all pests. The benefits of pet attachment centered mostly on aesthetic judgments and benevolent feelings toward predators and farmed animals, sentience attributions for pests, and concerns about the killing of all animal groups for human consumption. Pet attachment did not reliably relate to the attributions individuals made about the intelligence or dangerousness of animals, or their similarity to humans. The findings help clarify how pets might serve as ambassadors for other animals.
... Indeed, there is a growing area of research exploring the correlations between particular forms of prejudice, such as racism, sexism, or speciesism, and other more general psychological dispositions, such as social dominance orientation (SDO) (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, 61). There is some evidence that SDO is a disposition also connected to racial and species prejudice (Caviola et al., 2018;Dhont, Hodson, Costello, & MacInnis, 2014;Dhont, Hodson, & Leite, 2016;Graça, Calheiros, Oliveira, & Milfont, 2018). To a lesser extent, it seems that political conservatism is relevant to speciesist attitudes, and right-wing authoritarianism seems to be connected to the perception of vegetarianism as a threat (Caviola et al., 2018;. ...
Many sentient beings suffer serious harms due to a lack of moral consideration. Importantly, such harms could also occur to a potentially astronomical number of morally considerable future beings. This paper argues that, to prevent such existential risks, we should prioritise the strategy of expanding humanity’s moral circle to include, ideally, all sentient beings. We present empirical evidence that, at micro- and macro-levels of society, increased concern for members of some outlying groups facilitates concern for others. We argue that the perspective of moral circle expansion can reveal and clarify important issues in futures studies, particularly regarding animal ethics and artificial intelligence. While the case for moral circle expansion does not hinge on specific moral criteria, we focus on sentience as the most recommendable policy when deciding, as we do, under moral uncertainty. We also address various nuances of adjusting the moral circle, such as the risk of over-expansion.
... Studies have shown that Agreeableness and social dominance orientation-an individual difference construct indexing support for group-based hierarchies (Pratto et al., 1994) and intrinsically linked to empathy (Sidanius et al., 2013)help explain sex differences in environmentalism (see e.g. Franzen and Mader, 2020;Graça et al., 2018;. Our recent research also showed that Conscientiousness can help explain sex differences in pro-environmental tendencies (Desrochers et al., 2019). ...
In this chapter, I discuss the associations between pro-environmental tendencies and personality traits, as outlined in the Big Five and HEXACO models. I review findings showing tight links between core personality characteristics and pro-environmentalism, and also report re-analyses of published data examining the extent to which country-level indicators moderate personality–environmentalism correlations and novel data examining these associations at the personality nuances level. Openness to Experience was the personality trait consistently found to display positive correlations with pro-environmental tendencies—not only at the highest domain level but also at the facet and nuance levels. To a lesser degree, both Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness show positive correlations with attitudes and behaviours related to protection of the natural environment. Openness–attitude associations were stronger in countries with below-median levels of environmental performance, and Openness–behaviour associations were stronger in countries with above-median levels of Individualism. I conclude that there is an ample support for pro-environmental tendencies as a reflection of people's core personality traits, and provide an agenda for future research on this topic.
... Although humans can control aspects of behaviour to be socially appropriate, facial expression is less susceptible to this monitoring [31]. Often, true emotion is leaked through facial expression because people are not able to see themselves perform these behaviours from the perspective of others [42]. Furthermore, facial expression plays a principle role in social communication, and facilitates an understanding of the emotion, attitudes, and ideas of others [43]. ...
People often express concern for the welfare of farm animals, but research on this topic has relied upon self-report. Facial expressions provide a quantifiable measure of emotional response that may be less susceptible to social desirability bias and other issues associated with self-report. Viewing other humans in pain elicits facial expressions indicative of empathy. Here we provide the first evidence that this measure can also be used to assess human empathetic responses towards farm animals, showing that facial expressions respond reliably when participants view videos of farm animals undergoing painful procedures. Participants (n = 30) were asked to watch publicly sourced video clips of cows and pigs undergoing common management procedures (e.g. disbudding, castration, tail docking) and control videos (e.g. being lightly restrained, standing). Participants provided their subjective rating of the intensity of 5 negative emotions (pain, sadness, anger, fear, disgust) on an 11-point Likert scale. Videos of the participants (watching the animals) were scored for intensity of unpleasantness of the participants' facial expression (also on an 11-point Likert scale) by a trained observer who was blind to treatment. Participants showed more intense facial expressions while viewing painful procedures versus control procedures (mean ± SE Likert; 2.4 ± 0.08 versus 0.6 ± 0.17). Participants who reported more intense negative responses also showed stronger facial expressions (slope ± SE = 0.4 ± 0.04). Both the self-reported and facial measures varied with species and procedure witnessed. These results indicate that facial expressions can be used to assess human-animal empathy.
... Gender, which was not always controlled for in analyses, is an important variable for future studies in this area to include given its association with attitudes toward animals and concern/action with regard to animal welfare (Herzog, 2007), anthropomorphism of nature (Tam, 2014), and pro-environmentalism more broadly (Gifford and Nilsson, 2014). There is also evidence that gender differences in empathy mediate gender differences in attitudes toward animal exploitation (Graça et al., 2018). There may be some benefit to controlling for age in analyses given its associations with pro-environmentalism (Gifford and Nilsson, 2014); however, compared with gender it appears to have a less consistent association with empathy and pro-environmental outcomes (e.g., Tam, 2013). ...
It is taken for granted that anthropomorphising non-human species promotes pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, but the literature appears to be conflicted on this topic. There is also little discussion in the literature as to whether there are different types of anthropomorphism that may be particularly associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. This is the first systematic review to address the hypothesis that there is a significant association between anthropomorphism of nature and pro-environmental variables, and that anthropomorphism has a beneficial causal role. This review synthesises results from 25 studies (18 correlational; seven experimental) in addressing this hypothesis, weighting its conclusions by an appraisal of study quality. This review presents evidence from high quality studies that mind attribution to non-human entities is consistently associated with pro-environmental variables, and that inducing anthropomorphic perceptions of non-human entities can generate pro-environmental outcomes in some circumstances. The authors also summarise the highest-quality evidence with regard to the possible mediators of the relationship between anthropomorphism and pro-environmental variables, and consider the findings through the lens of the theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991). The implications of the findings for future research and conservation campaigns are discussed alongside a note of caution about the limitations and potential disadvantages of anthropomorphism.
... More negative attitudes towards farrowing crates among people with higher levels of education may be associated with access to social media that exposes contentious livestock production issues (Stevens et al., 2018). Others have reported lower support of contentions farm animal practices among women (Hötzel et al., 2020;Ventura et al., 2013), which may be related to differences in speciesism, social dominance and empathy (Graça et al., 2018). Also, others have shown that people with ties to livestock production are more accepting of contentious animal husbandry practices, such as dairy cow-calf early separation (Ventura et al., 2013) or housing pregnant sows in stalls (Yunes et al., 2018). ...
Restricting farm animals’ movement is a highly contentious practice, and yet farrowing crates are widely used to house lactating sows and piglets. Socially sustainable changes on farrowing systems may be compromised due to the lack of information on societal attitudes towards farrowing crates. Attitudes are shaped by an individual’s experiences and beliefs; having a pet may influence belief in animal sentience and empathy towards animals, and thus public concern towards animal welfare. Therefore, understanding peoples’ attitudes towards farrowing crates can contribute to future decisions on that matter. This study aimed at investigating the influence of sociodemographic characteristics, including having a pet and perceived relationship with pet, on Brazilian citizens’ attitudes towards farrowing crates. People who had pets or not (Sv1) and people who had a dog or cat (Sv2) were recruited online to participate in two surveys. We provided a brief text and two short videos illustrating conventional farrowing crates and asked participants to rate, in 5-point Likert scales, their attitudes towards farrowing crates and to justify their answer. In Sv2 we also asked people to indicate whether they regarded their pet as a child, a family member, a friend or an animal. Seventy five percent of the participants (Sv1, n = 891; Sv2, n = 1048) were opposed to housing pigs in farrowing crates. Attitudes towards farrowing crates were positively correlated with the perceived quality of life of the sows (Sv1: r = 0.77, P < 0.001; Sv2: r = 0.76, P < 0.001) and piglets (Sv1: r = 0.75, P < 0.001; Sv2: r = 0.7, P < 0.001). Lower attitude scores were associated with participants’ being females, urbanites, with no involvement in livestock, no previous awareness of the practice, as well as with attributing higher sentience to pigs, having a pet, and regarding it as a child or member of the family (P < 0.001). Having a pet (Sv1, Ch-Sq = 9.1, 1 df, P = 0.002) and regarding the pet a child or member of the family (Sv2, Ch-Sq = 49.3, 3 df, P < 0.001) led to greater agreement with the statement “I feel bad for the sow”. Opposition to farrowing crates was underpinned by belief in animal sentience, empathy towards animals, and animal welfare concerns. Throughout the world, urban citizens are becoming increasingly detached from livestock production; pets are the main reference animals for many and, in some cases, part of the family. Thus, our findings suggest that restrictive housing systems for farm animals may become increasingly irreconcilable with societal values.
... They reasoned that some aspects of environmentalism not included in their work might be more aligned with SDO-D. Indeed, Graça et al. (2018) observed that the two subdimensions of SDO had comparable associations with attitudes towards animal exploitation. A secondary aim of the current project is thus to examine this issue further. ...
Climate change denial is motivated in part by ideology, with research showing that a greater tolerance of social inequality is consistently linked to lower pro-environmentalism. We report findings from two mixed-methods studies. In Study One, we provide insight into how individuals with varying levels of social dominance orientation discuss environmental issues by analyzing 59 interviews. These analyses revealed that many individuals were concerned about the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to climate change; however, many were also armed with justifications excusing their and others’ inaction on the problem. To establish further how the ideas shared in the interviews related to social dominance, we reworked the ideas into statements for survey-based research in Study Two. Social dominance orientation and its composite dimensions related to most interview-based statements, with those scoring higher on dominance attitudes more opposed to top-down action on climate change, and those more tolerant of inequality more opposed to individual action. We discuss implications for climate change communication.
A largescale shift towards plant-based diets is considered a critical requirement for tackling ethical, environmental, and global health issues associated with animal food production and consumption. Although previous research has identified psychological strategies that enable meat-eaters to justify and continue meat consumption and feel less morally conflicted about it, research on the psychological strategies that enable consumers to continue dairy, egg, and fish consumption is scarce. We conducted an online survey study using adjusted version of the Meat-Eating Justification Scale to investigate the use of psychological strategies to cope with cognitive dissonance related to meat, dairy, egg, and fish consumption in omnivores (n = 186), pescatarians (n = 106), vegetarians (n = 143), vegans (n = 203), and flexitarians (n = 63). Results indicated greater use of meat-related dissonance reduction strategies among omnivores as compared to other dietary groups, greater use of fish-related dissonance reduction strategies among fish consumers (omnivores, flexitarians and pescatarians) compared to vegetarians and vegans, and greater use of dairy and egg-related dissonance reduction strategies among dairy and egg consumers (omnivores, flexitarians, pescatarians, and vegetarians) as compared to vegans. This pattern was particularly clear for justifications used to defend animal product consumption, denial of animal suffering, and use of dichotomization when considering meat and fish consumption. These findings highlight the importance of extending the research on dissonance reduction strategies beyond meat consumption and studying the consumption of a range of animal products. This can help in identifying the psychological barriers to adopting a plant-based diet and informing interventions for behaviour change.
Inappropriate cattle handling poses a reputational threat to the dairy industry. To enhance social sustainability, handling practices must resonate with societal values about animal care. However, it has yet to be determined to what extent industry and public stakeholders differ in their perception of common cattle handling situations. We administered an online survey to samples of dairy industry (IND) and public (PUB) stakeholders to examine how they perceive a variety of cow handling scenarios ranging from positive to negative in terms of impacts on animal welfare. Participants were presented with 12 brief videos depicting a range of realistic cow handling situations and responded to measures designed to assess their attitudes and beliefs about each scenario, their perception of the emotional response of the cows depicted in each scenario, as well as their own personal emotional response. Preexisting beliefs about cow treatment on US dairy farms and demographic data, including self-reported dairy consumption, were also collected and analyzed. Before viewing the videos, 52.9% of PUB (vs 79.0% of IND) believed cows were treated well while 27.2% (vs 9.0% of IND) believed cows were treated badly. Within IND, believing cows were treated badly was more common among non-whites, those with greater formal education, more liberal politics, or from urban or suburban environments. In PUB, female and younger participants were more likely to believe cows were treated badly before viewing the videos. In both samples, participants with more positive preexisting beliefs about dairy cow treatment in the US reported consuming dairy products more frequently. In both PUB and IND, scenarios which were rated more positively for attitudes or for the cows' or respondents' emotional experiences were also perceived as more common. With a given cow handling scenario, qualitative attitudes (i.e., a positive, negative, or neutral valence) did not differ between the samples. In both samples, at the participant level, overall attitudes toward cow handling scenarios were highly correlated with both their personal emotional response to the scenario and their perception of the cows' emotional responses. Although the participants' overall personal emotional responses did not differ between the samples, IND rated cows as experiencing more negative emotions overall. The consensus between industry and public stakeholders around dairy cow handling practices observed in this study could provide a common starting point for addressing other, more contentious animal welfare issues.
As a general rule, we care about animal welfare, and we consider animal suffering to be morally unjustified. However, in certain circumstances animal exploitation and suffering appear to us as necessary to meet certain goals, and this could represent a real moral dilemma. This is particularly the case for medical and pharmaceutical animal experimentation, which involves the use of animals to assess the toxicity and ensure the safety of drugs intended for human consumption. Animal experimentation perfectly contrasts the considerations we have for an in-group (i.e., humans) to the ones we have for an out-group (i.e., animals) and although the inter-individual differences in opinion about this practice are not yet truly understood, they may simply reflect broader attitudinal and behavioral tendencies in intergroup relations. In addition, the health benefits of this practice come at the expense of animals that we would normally be motivated to protect from suffering, and therefore strategies should exist to streamline and facilitate the conduct of experiments. The aim of this work is to examine what are the individual and contextual determinants of attitudes and behaviors toward animal experimentation and laboratory animals. We hypothesize that individual dispositions (i.e., personality) effectively predicting interpersonal and intergroup relations may also guide attitudes and behaviors toward animal experimentation and laboratory animals. We also hypothesize that mechanisms that facilitate the conduct of harmful behaviors toward others may also appear in the context of animal experimentation and legitimize the use of laboratory animals. Thirteen studies using a wide and diverse range of data collection methods have been conducted and are displayed within six manuscripts. Results confirm that individuals’ characteristics and dispositions, such as gender, social dominance orientation, speciesist and empathic dispositions, predict not only the attitudes toward animal experimentation and laboratory-animals, but also the behavioral commitment to use them in the context of a harmful pharmaceutical research. Furthermore, our results also highlight the use of a motivated moral disengagement strategy such the denial of mind of laboratory animals to cope and rationalize with the paradox that represent the use of animals for research inquiries. Finally, in line with Milgram’s work, our results also demonstrate that scientific mindset, whether as a trait or experimentally induced, leads to a greater support for animal-experimentation in both in self-reported and behavioral measures. This thesis argues that the attitudes toward animal experimentation and laboratory animals merely reflect the way people perceive the social world in which they live and the way they perceive others. The study of animal experimentation thus seems heuristic for the analysis of humananimal relations and the intergroup dynamics that run through them.
While society is currently redefining its relationship with wild animals toward egalitarianism, the human-wildlife relationship promoted by the NAM remains firmly locked in the grip of human supremacy. This chapter explores how a belief in human entitlement plays out in the NAM’s selective use of ethics to facilitate exploitation (lethal use) of wild animals. Two topics are central here, which are how the NAM 1) only looks at the whole (animal species and population), and 2) how the NAM ontologizes wild animals as ‘natural renewable resources,’ as objects and human property (public, government and private) to be used. This insistence on animal-human separation, has shaped the management and contributed to Western society’s view of wild animals as inferior and individual lives as irrelevant.
The relation between humans and companion animals in chronic illness contexts. This article reviews and discusses, from an interdisciplinary perspective, recent research devel- opments focused on the different influences companion ani- mals have in human chronic illness, and vice-versa. The article identifies the need to understand the inter-species relational dynamics around this experience. It highlights the beneficial role that companion animals may have in the lives of humans suffering from a chronic illness, as well as the role humans play when animals are chronically ill. Furthermore, it points out the importance of considering the interconnections between humans and non-humans.
keywords: companion animals; humans; human-animal rela- tions; chronic illness; post-humanism.
El estudio tuvo como objetivo conocer el nivel de empatía humano-animal y humano-humano, y la percepción de bienestar animal en estudiantes de profesiones relacionadas al uso, manejo y cuidado animal de instituciones mexicanas de educación superior. Se aplicó un cuestionario electrónico (Google Fomularios) donde se incluyó la Escala de Empatía de Paul (22 ítems) para medir el nivel de empatía humano-animal; el Índice de Reactividad Interpersonal (27 ítems) para medir la empatía humano-humano y el cuestionario para la medición de actitudes hacia el maltrato animal como indicador de percepción de bienestar animal (14 ítems). En total, 1688 encuestas procedentes de 35 instituciones fueron contestadas. Los resultados muestran que las mujeres tuvieron puntajes significativamente mayores que los estudiantes varones en la empatía humano-animal, humano-humano y percepción de bienestar animal. Hubo una reducción de la empatía humano-animal a partir del segundo año de la formación universitaria en varones y del tercer año en mujeres. Estudiantes con preferencia hacia la producción animal mostraron valores de empatía humano-animal y percepción del bienestar animal más bajas. Se considera necesario la introducción de contenidos en los planes de estudio para desarrollar habilidades de empatía hacia los animales desde el inicio y durante toda la formación profesional.
Veterinarians are increasingly looked to for guidance on matters relating to animal welfare, yet little is known about US veterinary students' attitudes and beliefs about animals. In 2019, we surveyed all first-year veterinary students at a major US veterinary college (n = 123) before and after taking a required one-credit introductory animal welfare course. Attitudes were measured using the Pests, Pets and Profit (PPP) scale and belief in animal mind (BAM) was measured using an ad hoc measure adapted from previous work. Pre- and post-course comparisons indicated the introductory animal welfare course had no immediate effect on veterinary students' attitudes or BAM. Veterinary students' attitudes were most positive for animals considered pets, followed by pests and those used for profit. Students believed most species possess a wide variety of mental capacities, including many secondary emotions often considered uniquely human (eg guilt, embarrassment, jealousy). Sociodemographic variables consistently associated with more positive attitudes towards animals were: female gender, vegetarianism and liberal political ideology. Preferring a career involving large or food animal practice was consistently associated with less positive attitudes towards animals. Belief in animal mind explained 3% of the variation in attitude scores, whereas sociodemographic variables explained 49% of variation in attitude scores. Female gender, vegetarianism and preferring small (vs large or food animal practice) were all associated with greater BAM scores. Understanding veterinary student attitudes towards animals and beliefs about the mental capacities of animals is important when evaluating a veterinarian's ability to adhere to their oath.
Scant attention has been paid to the differences in fundraising for social versus commercial ventures. We adopt a role congruity theory perspective to argue that because women and people of color are more congruent with role expectations attributed to social entrepreneurs, they experience better fundraising performance when raising crowdfunded capital for social ventures compared to commercial ventures. We then argue entrepreneur race heightens fundraising differences for men and women. Results indicate women experience better funding performance when funding a social versus commercial venture—an effect that is larger for women of color. Men of color experience worse performance when funding a social venture. We find no differences for White men.
Approval of hierarchy and inequality in society indexed by social dominance orientation
(SDO) extends to support for human dominance over the natural world. We tested this
negative association between SDO and environmentalism and the validity of the new Short
Social Dominance Orientation scale in two cross-cultural samples of students (N = 4,163, k =
25) and the general population (N = 1,237, k = 10). As expected, the higher people were on
SDO, the less likely they were to engage in environmental citizenship actions, proenvironmental
behaviors and to donate to an environmental organization. Multilevel
moderation results showed that the SDO–environmentalism relation was stronger in societies
with marked societal inequality, lack of societal development and environmental standards.
The interplay between individual psychological orientations and social context and the view
of nature subscribed to by those high in SDO are discussed.
Recent research and theorizing suggest that desires for group-based dominance underpin biases towards both human outgroups and (non-human) animals. A systematic study of the common ideological roots of human-human and human-animal biases is, however, lacking. Three studies (in Belgium, UK, and USA) tested the Social Dominance Human-Animal Relations Model (SD-HARM) proposing that Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) is a key factor responsible for the significant positive association between ethnic outgroup attitudes and speciesist attitudes towards animals, even after accounting for other ideological variables (that possibly confound previous findings). Confirming our hypotheses, the results consistently demonstrated that SDO, more than right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), is a key factor connecting ethnic prejudice and speciesist attitudes. Furthermore, Studies 2 and 3 showed that both SDO and RWA are significantly related to perceived threat posed by vegetarianism (i.e., ideologies and diets minimizing harm to animals), but with SDO playing a focal role in explaining the positive association between threat perceptions and ethnic prejudice. Study 3 replicated this pattern, additionally including political conservatism in the model, itself a significant correlate of speciesism. Finally, a meta-analytic integration across studies provided robust support for SD-HARM and offers important insights into the psychological parallels between human intergroup and human-animal relations.
Nonhuman animals are ubiquitous to human life, and permeate a diversity of social contexts by providing humans with food and clothing, serving as participants in research, improving healing, and offering entertainment, leisure, and companionship. Despite the impact that animals have on human lives and vice versa, the field of psychology has barely touched upon the topic of human-animal relations as an important domain of human activity. We review the current state of research on human-animal relations, showing how this body of work has implications for a diverse range of psychological themes including evolutionary processes, development, normative factors, gender and individual differences, health and therapy, and intergroup relations. Our aim is to highlight human-animal relations as a domain of human life that merits theoretical and empirical attention from psychology as a discipline. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
Despite the well-documented implications of right-wing ideological dispositions for human intergroup relations, surprisingly little is understood about the implications for human–animal relations. We investigate why right-wing ideologies – social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) – positively predict attitudes toward animal exploitation and meat consumption. Two survey studies conducted in heterogeneous community samples (Study 1, N = 260; Study 2, N = 489) demonstrated that right-wing ideologies predict greater acceptance of animal exploitation and more meat consumption through two explaining mechanisms: (a) perceived threat from non-exploitive ideologies to the dominant carnist ideology (for both SDO and RWA) and (b) belief in human superiority over animals (for SDO). These findings hold after controlling for hedonistic pleasure from eating meat. Right-wing adherents do not simply consume more animals because they enjoy the taste of meat, but because doing so supports dominance ideologies and resistance to cultural change. Psychological parallels between human intergroup relations and human–animal relations are considered.
Recent theorizing suggests that biases toward human outgroups may be related to biases toward (non-human) animals, and that individual differences in desire for group dominance and inequality may underlie associations between these biases. The present investigation directly tests these assumptions. As expected, the results of the current study (N = 191) demonstrate that endorsing speciesist attitudes is significantly and positively associated with negative attitudes toward ethnic outgroups. Importantly, individual differences in social dominance orientation accounted for the association between speciesist and ethnic outgroup attitudes; that is, these variables are associated due to their common association with social dominance orientation that underpins these biases. We conclude that social dominance orientation represents a critical individual difference variable underlying ideological belief systems and attitudes pertaining to both human–human intergroup and human–animal relations.
Ecofeminism suggests that women are more active than men regarding
environmental issues for a variety of social, cultural, and biological reasons. In
support to these arguments, women predominate within the overall grassroots of
the Environmental Justice movement. However, claims have been made that
environmental education theory and research are overlooking gender differences
in environmentalism. Although literature research reports that women show
stronger environmental concern and attitudes than men and although there has
been a growing awareness of the importance of gender in the willingness to act
environmentally, we argue that there has been relatively little recognition of its
potential in the context of environmentally responsible behavior. Finally, we
suggest that by incorporating findings about gender differences in motivation,
attitudes, and behaviors, Environmental Education would be in a position to
inspire women from all race and class backgrounds to engage in effective
ecological and political action.
The present study tested whether a greater level of emotional empathy in women mediates the commonly reported relationship between gender and environmental concern and action. In an undergraduate sample (N=202), it was found that gender differences existed in altruistic environmental concerns as well as in willingness to cooperate and compete for resources in a self-report commons dilemma. It was found that gender differences were fully mediated (i.e., reduced to non-significance) by emotional empathy. Implications and suggestions for future study of this issue are offered.
A belief in human dominance over nature lies at the heart of current environmental problems. In this article, we extend the theoretical scope of social dominance theory by arguing that social dominance orientation (SDO) is an important variable in understanding person-environment relations. We argue that individuals high in SDO are more willing to exploit the environment in unsustainable ways because SDO promotes human hierarchical dominance over nature. Four studies provide support for this perspective. High SDO was associated with lower levels of environmental concern in a nationally representative New Zealand sample (Study 1) and in country-level data across 27 nations (Study 2). SDO was also positively related to utilization attitudes toward nature (Study 3) and mediated the gender difference in beliefs about anthropogenic climate change (Study 4), and both occurred independently of right-wing authoritarianism. Implications for the human-dominated view of nature subscribed to by those high in SDO are discussed.
I review the direction and magnitude (effect sizes) of gender differences that have been reported in several areas of human-animal interactions. These include: attitudes toward the treatment of animals, attachment to pets, involvement in animal protectionism, animal hoarding, hunting, animal abuse, and bestiality. Women, on average, show higher levels of positive behaviors and attitudes toward animals (e.g., attitudes towards their use, involvement in animal protection), whereas men typically have higher levels of negative attitudes and behaviors (e.g., hunting, animal abuse, less favorable attitudes toward animal protection). The effect sizes of gender differences range from small (e.g., attachment), to medium size (e.g., attitudes toward animal use) to large (e.g., animal rights activism, animal abuse by adults.) In most areas, there is considerable overlap between men and women, with much greater within-sex than between-sex variation. Research on the roles of gender in human-animal relationships is hindered by the omission in many reports of gender difference effect sizes and basic descriptive statistics.
Social dominance orientation (SDO), one's degree of preference for inequality among social groups, is introduced. On the basis of social dominance theory, it is shown that (a) men are more social dominance-oriented than women, (b) high-SDO people seek hierarchy-enhancing professional roles and low-SDO people seek hierarchy-attenuating roles, (c) SDO was related to beliefs in a large number of social and political ideologies that support group-based hierarchy (e.g., meritocracy and racism) and to support for policies that have implications for intergroup relations (e.g., war, civil rights, and social programs), including new policies. SDO was distinguished from interpersonal dominance, conservatism, and authoritariansim. SDO was negatively correlated with empathy, tolerance, communality, and altruism. The ramifications of SDO in social context are discussed. African and African American Studies Psychology
Individual differences in the preference for group-based hierarchy and inequality, as indexed by social dominance orientation (SDO), have been shown to predict environment-relevant variables. To date the literature examining the SDO–environmentalism link has used the traditional unidimensional conceptualisation of SDO. This article reports three studies using the new measurement and conceptualisation of SDO that involves the SDO7 scale and the sub-dimensions of intergroup dominance (SDO-D) and intergroup anti-egalitarianism (SDO-E). SDO-D entails support for group-based dominance achieved via overt oppression and aggressive intergroup behaviour, and SDO-E entails support for group-based inequality subtly achieved via unequal distribution of resources. Our results show anti-egalitarianism to be the main SDO sub-dimension related to environmentalism. While SDO-D is either a weaker or non-significant predictor, individuals with high levels of SDO-E were less willing to make personal sacrifices for the environment, value environmental protection and endorse climate change beliefs. Interestingly, neither facet of SDO predicted change in environmentalism over a five-month period; but climate change denial predicted change in SDO-E while pro-environmental attitudes predicted change in SDO-D over time.
Women tend to display greater pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour than men. This gender difference in environmentalism has been explained in terms of distinct gender role socialization, with women socialized to be more other-focused and empathic compared to men. A related explanation is that women are more environmentally concerned because they are less prone to favour social dominance than men, which is in line with recent research showing that empathy and social dominance orientation (SDO) are intrinsically linked. We tested a Bayesian path model examining the extent to which empathy and SDO predicted environmental values over a one-year period, and the extent to which such effects mediated the initial gender difference. Results from a national probability adult sample (N = 4381) indicated that both empathy and SDO partially and independently mediated the gender–environmentalism link. Women tended to display higher levels of environmental values because they were higher in empathy and lower in SDO, while men displayed lower levels of environmental values because they were lower in empathy and higher in SDO. The findings have theoretical implications for the reciprocal relations between empathy and SDO, and practical implications for understanding and fostering pro-environmental engagement across distinct social actors.
Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) predicts support for unsustainable environmental exploitation, but the mechanism driving this effect remains unclear. Here we propose and test a novel Hierarchy Enforcement Hypothesis of Environmental Exploitation. Two experiments analysed using Bayesian moderated regression showed that SDO predicted support for a new mining operation expected to generate further profits to high-status groups in society, but not when profits were expected to equally benefit all members of the community. SDO predicts environmental exploitation to the extent that doing so helps sustain and widen the gap between dominant and disadvantaged groups through the disproportionate allocation of resources. This research identifies a dominance motive that may explain why some people support environmental exploitation more than others.
Objective:
This project was directed at examination of the potential reciprocal relationship between empathy and social dominance orientation (SDO), with the purpose of testing the predictions from Duckitt's highly influential dual process model of prejudice, and further examining the validity of the mere effect view of social dominance orientation.
Method:
To examine this relationship, the authors employed cross-lagged structural equation modeling with manifest variables across two studies using large samples from different parts of the world. Study 1 consisted of data from two waves of 389 (83% female) Belgian university students, with each wave separated by 6 months. Study 2 consisted of two waves of data from a national probability sample of 4,466 New Zealand adults (63% female), with each wave separated by a 1-year interval.
Results:
Results supported our expectation of a reciprocal longitudinal relationship between empathy and SDO. Moreover, the results also revealed that SDO's effect on empathy over time tended to be stronger than empathy's effect on SDO over time, countering the predictions derived from the dual process model.
Conclusions:
These results represent the first time the possible reciprocal effects of empathy and SDO on one another have been examined using panel data rather than less appropriate cross-sectional analysis. They suggest the need to reexamine some key assumptions of the dual process model and further question the mere effect view of SDO.
Gender segregation continues to exist in many activity and occupational domains. This article uses the expectancy effect perspective to analyze the role parents may play in influencing their children to engage in gender role stereotyped activities. It outlines the theoretical bases for such effects, and discusses how to distinguish between accuracy and perceptual bias in parents' gender role differentiated perceptions of their children's competencies and interests. Then it summarizes the results of a series of studies, which show that parents distort their perceptions of their own children in gender role stereotypic activities such as math and sports, that the child's gender affects parents' causal attributions for their children's performance in gender role stereotypic activities, and that these perceptual biases influence the children's own self-perceptions and activity choices. Finally, the article presents a theoretical model of how these processes may occur.
A review of recent research (1988 to 1998) on gender differences in environmental attitudes and behaviors found that, contrary to past inconsistencies, a clearer picture has emerged: Women report stronger environmental attitudes and behaviors than men. Additional evidence of gender differences in environmental attitudes and behaviors was also supported across age (Study 1) and across 14 countries (Study 2). As a single variable, the effect of gender on proenvironmental behavior was consistently stronger than on environmental attitudes. Explanations for gender differences in environmentalism were examined in Study 3. It was found that compared to males, females had higher levels of socialization to be other oriented and socially responsible. Implications for theory, social action, and policy are discussed.
Prosocial behavior consists of behaviors regarded as beneficial to others, including helping, sharing, comforting, guiding, rescuing, and defending others. Although women and men are similar in engaging in extensive prosocial behavior, they are different in their emphasis on particular classes of these behaviors. The specialty of women is prosocial behaviors that are more communal and relational, and that of men is behaviors that are more agentic and collectively oriented as well as strength intensive. These sex differences, which appear in research in various settings, match widely shared gender role beliefs. The origins of these beliefs lie in the division of labor, which reflects a biosocial interaction between male and female physical attributes and the social structure. The effects of gender roles on behavior are mediated by hormonal processes, social expectations, and individual dispositions.
Arguing from a sociobiological perspective, Sidanius and Pratto (1999) have shown that the male/female difference in social dominance orientation (SDO) is largely invariant across cultural, situational and contextual boundaries. The main objective of this study was to test the validity of Social Dominance Theory (SDT) by contrasting it with a model derived from Social Identity Theory (SIT). More specifically, while SIT predicts that gender identification mediates the effect of gender on SDO, SDT predicts the reverse. According to SDT, the degree to which men and women endorse status legitimizing ideology should determine to what extent they identify with their gender group. Using structural equation modelling, the results provide strong support for the SIT model and no support for SDT predictions. Implications of these results for social dominance theory and its sociobiologically based invariance hypothesis are discussed.
The relationship between activation of the right cerebral hemisphere (RH) and empathy was investigated. Twenty-two men and 73 women participated by completing a chimeric face task and empathy questionnaire. For the face task, participants were asked to pick which of the two chimeric faces looked happier. Both men and women were significantly more likely to say the chimera with the smile to their left was happier, suggesting activation of the RH. As expected, men scored significantly lower than women on the empathy questionnaire, p=.003. A correlation was found between RH activation on the face task and empathy for women only, p=.037, suggesting a possible neural basis for gender differences in empathy.
International personality item pool: A scientific collaboratory for the development of advanced measures of personality traits and other individual differences
- L R Goldberg
Goldberg, L. R. (May 17, 2013). International personality item pool: A scientific collaboratory for the development of advanced measures of personality traits and other
individual differences. Retrieved from http://ipip.ori.org.