Is There Such a Thing as

Prejudice Toward Animals?

Scott Plous
 Touchy Topic of Speciesism

1. Speciesism appears to fly in the face of

the love many people have for animals
2. Speciesism runs the risk of trivializing
social problems such as racism and sexism
3. Speciesism suggests a demeaning
equivalence between human targets of
prejudice

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 Generalization of Dissonance-
Reducing Statements

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 Importance of Investigation

Are the parallels between

speciesism and other
forms of prejudice
psychologically
meaningful, or largely
superficial?

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 Challenges Combating
Speciesism
• Dissociation
– Cognitive separation from the
facts

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 Language
• Farming—cultivating, crop, seed, process,
and harvesting
• Trapping and hunting—bagging, thinning,
managing, controlling, trophies, and
renewable resource
• Legal—chattel or personal property
• Eating—cows=beef, calves=veal,
pigs=pork, and singular noun=plural noun

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 Appearance
• “To acquaint a customer with the knowledge that the
lamb chops she has just purchased were part of the
anatomy of one of those pretty little creatures we see
gamboling in the fields at springtime is probably the
surest way of turning her into a vegetarian.” (Meat,
1997, May 5, p. 12)
• Body parts that are associated with life or personality
(i.e. eyes, face, or brain) are rarely eaten or present in
meal.

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 Remoteness
• Animal industries such as
intensive farming operations,
slaughterhouses, animal
laboratories, and fur farms
are purposefully located in
remote or inaccessible areas
– Result: public awareness
of animal products is often
minimal (pg. 514)

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 Socialization
• Conflict: taught to love and consume animals
• Attempt to minimize by:
– Deemphasizing consumed animals as objects of affection
– Socializing children to believe that animal products comes
from happy farm animals that live in idyllic settings

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 Conflict Resolution
• Avoid topic entirely
• Asserting the use of animals is necessary
for survival
• Downplaying one’s own use
• Belittling the issue through humor
• Denying that animals feel pain
– Rene Descartes
– May in fact feel even more pain

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 Going to the Extreme
• Not only are animals immune to suffering, they
actually prefer to be used
– Deny animals are intelligent or are self-aware
– Saint Augustine
– Used to justify slavery and tests performed on African-
Americans

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 Similarity Principle
“In general, people give more consideration
to others who are perceived as similar to
themselves than to those who are perceived
as dissimilar” (pg. 523)

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The End