Increased perception of the experience dimension of the animal mind reduces instrumental violence against animals

Abstract

In this study, we investigated whether the perception of animal experience capacities, enabling individuals to recognize animals as moral patients, decreases instrumental violence against animals. Additionally, we aimed to distinguish this effect from the influence of perceptions of agency capacities, referred to as anthropomorphization. To achieve this, we conducted an online experimental study (N = 471, 54% women). Participants performed a manipulation task that increased their perception of the experience dimension of the animal mind and completed online questionnaires as part of a manipulation check to measure acceptance and intentions of instrumental violence against animals. Regression and mediation analyses revealed that increasing perception of the experience dimension of animal mind decreases instrumental violence against animals, particularly intentions to commit such violence, and this effect is unique and distinct from the effect of perception of the agency dimension, i.e., anthropomorphization. The key capacities in lowering violence were homeostatic emotions (pain, fear, hunger, and thirst) which indicate suffering that humans would want animals to avoid. However, when people perceive homeostatic emotions, increased perception of more complex capacities (anger, joy, pleasure, personality) and anthropomorphization do not result in an additional reduction in violence. We interpret these results to mean that people limit violence by using perception of animal experience capacities as pre-violation justification. These findings expand our knowledge about the functions of perception of experience capacities and demonstrate that people diminish animal experience capacities not only to rationalize violence but also as pre-violation justification to facilitate instrumental violence against animals.

Attributions of moral standing across six diverse cultures

“…Evidence on the role of agency is mixed and we are not aware of a study that explicitly tested the link for perceived social-cognitive capacities. Crucially, we tested whether the link between perceived sentience and moral standing would emerge consistently across our samples, as predicted by previous work (H. M. Gray et al, 2007;Nijssen et al, 2019;Potocka & Bielecki, 2023a;Sytsma & Machery, 2012). Finally, we also tested whether the link between sentience and moral standing was significantly stronger than the link between agency or social cognition and moral standing.…”

“…Participants rated the perceived mental capacities and moral standing for a diverse set of fourteen entities: a typical human adult, a human adult in a coma, a 1-month-old human embryo, a 1-week-old human baby, a 1-year-old human child, a chimpanzee, a dog, a pig, a bird, a fish, a fly, Siri (Apple's artificial intelligence), a tree, and a rock. Many previous studies examined the relation between mind perception and morality for one specific target (e.g., artificial intelligence, a fictitious alien species, a specific animal) or a group of animals (Ladak et al, 2023;Nijssen et al, 2019;Potocka & Bielecki, 2023a, 2023bSytsma & Machery, 2012). However, our goal was to sample a wider range of entities that included humans, non-human animals, plants, a nonliving entity, and artificial intelligence.…”