Speciesism can be understood as a socially acquired ideology, meaning it is likely to be transmitted, at least in part, via language. This perspective is important because it provides an explanation for why speciesism is commonplace and why children show signs of becoming more speciesist with age.
STEFAN LEACH: Anthropocentric speciesism manifests in the belief that the welfare of humans is more valuable compared to, for example, dolphins, chimps, cows, and chickens and is expressed in the greater discomfort felt at the thought of harming humans compared to chimps, dogs, and frogs. Similar preferences emerge when the welfare of humans and animals are pitted against one another. People give more to causes that support humans compared to animals. They also prefer autonomous vehicles that swerve to save a human but kill a cat or dog more than vehicles that do the opposite.
Likewise, people are more reluctant to sacrifice a human to save several humans than they are to sacrifice a dog, chimp, or pig to save several dogs, chimps, or pigs. This suggests that they experience greater prohibitions against harming humans compared to animals. These data capture the fact that humans are granted superior moral status over animals – a pattern that is consistent with anthropocentric speciesism…
Speciesism, like other forms of prejudice, is thought to be underpinned by biased patterns of language use. Thus far, however, psychological science has primarily focused on how speciesism is reflected in individuals’ thoughts as opposed to wider collective systems of meaning such as language. We present a large-scale quantitative test of speciesism by applying machine-learning methods (word embeddings) to billions of English words derived from conversation, film, books, and the Internet…
We found evidence of anthropocentric speciesism, in that words denoting concern and value were more closely associated with words denoting humans compared to many other animal groups. We also found evidence of what we refer to as companion animal speciesism, in that the same words were more closely associated with words denoting companion animals compared to many other animal groups…
The findings largely supported both hypotheses, providing evidence of anthropocentric and companion animal speciesism in everyday language. This is reminiscent of the greater moral concern people express for humans compared to animals… The fact that these hypotheses were confirmed across conversation, TV, films, books, and the Internet, leads us to construe speciesism as a ‘collective representation’. As a whole, we take this as strong evidence in support of the idea that speciesism is reflected in language…
By demonstrating the presence and pervasiveness of speciesism in language, the findings speak to the nature of speciesism in a way that prior methods do not. Speciesism can be understood as a socially acquired ideology, meaning it is likely to be transmitted, at least in part, via language. This perspective is important because it provides an explanation for why speciesism is commonplace and why children show signs of becoming more speciesist with age…
It is not clear whether our findings reflect patterns of language that shape how people think. There is some indirect evidence to support this idea. Collective linguistic representations, of the sort we identified here, tend to mirror what is captured by conventional measures of mental association. There is also evidence that social learning can be driven by the types of linguistic co-occurrences that word embedding models capture. Further evidence is required, however, to draw causal conclusions about whether these patterns in language shape how people think about animals. SOURCE…
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