The morality of eating meat: the role of social norms in childhood and adolescence

吃肉的道德：社会规范在童年和青少年时期的作用

• 批准号: 2869037
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2869037
• 关键词: morality; eating; meat; role; social

Diets high in animal-derived foods are associated with negative environmental and personal health outcomes (Rust et al., 2020). Yet, eating animals is highly normative in Western cultures (USDA, 2018). Food preferences are formed in childhood, a developmental period characterized by enhanced moral concern for animal welfare (McGuire et al., 2022). At the same time, children use social norms to navigate moral situations. In the context of food, no research has investigated the interplay between age and social norms. As meat-eating norms become internalized during development, dietary norms likely guide evaluations of meat-eating acceptability from an early age. This raises important questions that will be addressed in the proposed research. First, when do children begin to understand it may be more socially acceptable to eat some animals compared to others? Second, how do children evaluate and justify meat-eating behaviour in contexts where social norms are especially salient (e.g., Christmas), compared to mundane consumption. And third, how are peers who defy social norms of meat-eating evaluated? Human relationships with non-human animals can involve a moral conflict between caring for certain animals, while tacitly endorsing harm against others through consumption. This "meat-paradox" fosters a state of cognitive dissonance, where individuals recognise the inconsistency between their dietary behaviour and their moral concern for animals (Rothgerber, 2020). Social norms are one powerful tool used to minimize this conflict. Prior research has focused on the 4 Ns of meat-eating rationalization, a collection of self-serving justifications which state eating meat is natural, normal, necessary, and nice (Piazza et al., 2015). However, limited empirical work has investigated how social norms are represented in children's and adolescents' evaluations of meat-eating behaviour. This is important, as the emerging salience of social norms has been shown to influence children's evaluation and reasoning in other decision-making domains, such as resource allocation (McGuire et al., 2017), social exclusion (Hitti & Killen, 2015), and evaluating peers who deviate from ingroup expectations (McGuire et al., 2019). The proposed project will, for the first time, investigate how developmental trends in social norm understanding influence children's and adolescents' evaluations of behaviour in the context of meat-eating. Moreover, the research will conduct studies using novel paradigms to examine how children and adolescents evaluate a deviant peer group member who challenges the established meat-eating norm. This question is particularly important in the context of food, as deviant individuals represent potential changemakers, challenging normative practises in favour of more sustainable plant-based alternatives. Therefore, how people react to these deviants has the potential to reinforce or change existing social norms.

较高的动物衍生食物的饮食与负面环境和个人健康结果有关（Rust等，2020）。然而，在西方文化中，吃动物是高标准的（USDA，2018年）。食物偏好是在童年时期形成的，一个发育时期的特征是动物福利的道德问题加剧（McGuire等，2022）。同时，儿童使用社会规范来应对道德情况。在食品的背景下，没有研究研究年龄和社会规范之间的相互作用。随着进食规范在开发过程中的内在化，饮食规范可能会指导从小就可以评估吃肉的可接受性。这提出了拟议研究中将解决的重要问题。首先，与其他动物相比，吃一些动物在社会上可能更容易接受？其次，与平凡的消费相比，儿童如何在社会规范特别突出的情况下评估和证明肉食的行为是合理的（例如，圣诞节）。第三，如何评估食肉的社会规范的同行？人类与非人类动物的关系可能涉及照顾某些动物之间的道德冲突，同时通过消费对他人的危害。这种“肉 - 偏见”促进了一种认知失调的状态，在这种状态下，人们认识到他们的饮食行为与动物的道德关注之间的不一致性（Rothgerber，2020年）。社会规范是一种强大的工具，用于最大程度地减少这一冲突。先前的研究集中在4 n ns的食肉合理化上，这是一系列自我服务的理由，即饮食肉是自然，正常，必要和良好的（Piazza等，2015）。但是，有限的经验工作调查了儿童和青少年对吃肉行为的评估中如何代表社会规范。这一点很重要，因为已经证明，社会规范的新兴显着性会影响儿童在其他决策领域的评估和推理，例如资源分配（McGuire等，2017），社会排斥（Hitti＆Killen，2015年），并评估偏离Ingroup期望的同伴（McGuire等人（McGuire等人，2019年））。拟议的项目将首次研究社会规范理解的发展趋势如何影响儿童和青少年在吃肉的背景下对行为的评估。此外，该研究将使用新型范式进行研究，以研究儿童和青少年如何评估一个挑战已建立的食肉规范的异常同伴小组成员。在食品的背景下，这个问题尤其重要，因为偏差的人代表了潜在的变革者，这挑战了规范性实践，而支持更可持续的基于植物的替代方案。因此，人们如何对这些偏差的反应有可能加强或改变现有的社会规范。