Psychological Mechanisms in the Human Use of Animals

Abstract

American society uses millions of animals each day for food, recreation, and a variety of other purposes, yet psychologists-in contrast to other social scientists-have devoted very little attention to studying how people think about their use of animals. In this article, I propose that many factors supporting the use of animals are psychological in nature and are therefore legitimate topics for psychological research. After a brief review of research on attitudes toward the use of animals, I discuss several psychological factors that enable people to harm animals for human benefit: ( 1 ) structural variables that dissociate consumptive practices from the infliction of harm, ( 2 ) mechanisms that reduce personal conflict when dissociation is threatened, (3) ingroup-outgroup biases, and (4) factors relating to the perceived similarity of animals and humans. Throughout, the emphasis is on opportunities for empirical research rather than ideological or philosophical arguments concerning animal rights.More has been written on human-animal relations and animal welfare in the last two decades than in the preceding three millennia (Rollin, 1989). One I wish to thank

Self‐Enhancement and Social Responsibility: On Caring More, but Doing Less, Than Others

“…Nationwide surveys have found that 78% of respondents describe themselves as environmentalists, and 75-80% support animal rights (Gallup Poll, 1991;Pious, 1993). In the present study, 70% ofrespondents described themselves as environmentalists, and 80% identified themselves as animal rights supporters.…”

Economic Valuation of Biodiversity Conservation: the Meaning of Numbers

“…People's attitudes toward animals are generally based on 2 distinct motivational considerations: affect, representing people's affective responses to animals, and utility, representing people's perceptions of animals' instrumental value (Serpell 2004). People's affective responses toward species are influenced by anthropomorphic (Kellert & Berry 1980;Eddy et al 1993;Plous 1993) and anthropocentric variables (Serpell 1986;Herzog & Burghardt 1988). On one hand, species that are phylogenetically close and physically similar to humans are likely to attract more conservation support than dissimilar species (Gunnthorsdottir 2001;White et al 2001;Martín-López et al 2007).…”

“…The scientific literature indicates that conservation support is positively related to the perceived attractiveness of nonhuman species, which usually is an extension of human similarity (i.e., the similarity principle) (Plous 1993;Gunnthorsdottir 2001). Perceived similarity between humans and nonhuman species is related to the phylogenetic level (Eddy et al 1993) and to physical characteristics such as length, weight, and eye size (Herzog & Burghardt 1988).…”

Human preferences for species conservation: Animal charisma trumps endangered status

“…People also seem to have a preference for conserving animals that are similar to humans (DeKay & McClelland 1996, Gunnthorsdottir 2001, Plous 1993, Samples et al 1986). The preference among humans for animal species similar to them has been formalized as the Similar Principle Theory (Plous 1993).…”