Written by Lucius Caviola

Our relationship with animals is complex. There are some animals we treat very kindly; we keep them as pets, give them names, and take them to the doctor when they are sick. Other animals, in contrast, seem not to deserve this privileged status; we use them as objects for human consumption, trade, involuntary experimental subjects, industrial equipment, or as sources of entertainment. Dogs are worth more than pigs, horses more than cows, cats more than rats, and by far the most worthy species of all is our own one. Philosophers have referred to this phenomenon of discriminating individuals on the basis of their species membership as speciesism (Singer, 1975). Some of them have argued that speciesism is a form of prejudice analogous to racism or sexism.

Whether speciesism actually exists and whether it is related to other forms of prejudice isn’t just a philosophical question, however. Fundamentally, these are hypotheses about human psychology that can be explored and tested empirically. Yet surprisingly, speciesism has been almost entirely neglected by psychologists (apart from a few). There have been fewer than 30 publications in the last 70 years on this topic as revealed by a Web of Science search for the keywords speciesism and human-animal relations in all psychology journals. While this search may not be totally exhaustive, it pales in comparison to the almost 3’000 publications on the psychology of racism in the same time frame. The fact that psychology has neglected speciesism is strange, given the relevance of the topic (we all interact with animals or eat meat), the prevalence of the topic in philosophy, and the strong focus psychology puts on other types of apparent prejudice. Researching how we assign moral status to animals should be an obvious matter of investigation for psychology.

Together with my colleagues Jim A.C. Everett and Nadira S. Faber, I recently published a paper on speciesism in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Caviola, Everett, & Faber, 2018). Our aim was to establish speciesism as a topic in the field. To that end, we developed a Speciesism Scale: a standardised, validated, and reliable measurement instrument that can assess the extent to which a person has speciesist views. Our research demonstrated that there is indeed a unique psychological construct — speciesism — that determines to what extent people discriminate individuals on the basis of their species membership. This construct is not captured by other measures of prejudice or prosociality and it shows some interesting properties.

Our research showed that the philosophers were right when they drew an analogy between speciesism and other forms of prejudice. Speciesism correlates positively with racism, sexism, and homophobia, and seems to be underpinned by the same socio-ideological beliefs. Similar to racism and sexism, speciesism appears to be an expression of Social Dominance Orientation: the ideological belief that inequality can be justified and that weaker groups should be dominated by stronger groups (Dhont, et al., 2016). In addition, speciesism correlates negatively with both empathy and actively open-minded thinking. Men are more likely to be speciesists than women. Yet, there are no correlations with age or education.

Speciesism also manifests in real world behavior. In our studies, speciesism predicted whether people are more willing to help humans than animals, or “superior” animals to “inferior” animals. For, example, when given the choice of donating to a charity that helps dogs or pigs, people are more likely to help dogs than pigs the higher they score on speciesism. Similarly, the higher people score on speciesism, the more willing they are to invest time to help homeless people than to help establish basic rights for chimpanzees. Finally, speciesism is related to ethical vegetarianism. Even though our studies showed that not everybody who rejects speciesism believes that eating meat is wrong, we still observed that people higher on speciesism tended to prefer a meat snack over a vegetarian snack.

Critics of speciesism as a concept sometimes argue that the reason we care less about animals is not due to species membership per se, but due to animals not being intelligent or not being able to suffer to the same extent as humans. Our research, however, showed that this objection doesn’t hold. It is true that people perceive animals or “inferior” animals to be less intelligent or less able to suffer than humans or “superior” animals. However, in our studies, people’s beliefs about individuals’ level of intelligence and capability to suffer only explains a small part of their behavior directed towards them. By far the strongest explanation of people’s behavior is speciesism itself. For example, even though people know that dogs and pigs are roughly similarly intelligent and similarly capable of suffering, they still are much more likely to help dogs than pigs. And, when asked whether they would rather help a chimpanzee or a human being who is mentally severely disabled, people are much more willing to help the human being than the chimpanzee, even if they believe that the chimpanzee is more intelligent and more capable of suffering than the human being. This clearly suggests that an individual’s species membership itself is a key determinant of how we value, perceive and treat that individual.

What can we make of these psychological findings? It’s important to note that this research is purely descriptive. It primarily tells us that speciesism is a psychological reality and that it shows up in our attitudes, emotions and behavior towards animals. As the philosophers argued, speciesism is indeed psychologically analogous to other forms of prejudice. What we want to make of these findings is a separate, moral question. And yet, these insights into the psychology of speciesism could inform our thinking about how we want to treat animals. If we consider racism to be wrong, and know that racism and speciesism are psychologically related, this might make us question whether speciesism shouldn’t be considered wrong as well. Either way, we have only just begun to understand the psychological aspects of speciesism. Hopefully, more researchers will recognize this and help to explore this phenomenon in greater depth.

Caviola, L., Everett, J.A.C., Faber, N.S. (In Press). The Moral Standing of Animals: Towards a Psychology of Speciesism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.