Those endorsing right-wing attitudes and values are more likely to support and treat animals as objects for human benefit (e.g., animal testing, fur industry, rodeos), hold human supremacist beliefs, and self-identify as frequent meat-eaters. Right-wing adherents do not simply consume more animals in daily life because they enjoy the taste of meat, but because doing so supports dominance ideologies and resistance to cultural change.
KRISTOF DHONT: Despite the well-documented implications of individual differences in ideology with regard to reactions toward human out-groups, surprisingly little is understood about the implications for non-human animals. As Walker’s poignant observation clarifies, many biases, including those involving non-human animals, are rooted in common ideological belief systems and show psychological parallels
Few studies have investigated relations between social-ideological orientations and exploitative attitudes and behaviors toward animals. Yet existing evidence reveals positive associations between right-wing ideologies such as RWA and SDO, on the one hand, and attitudes toward the exploitation of animals as objects for human benefit (e.g., animal testing, fur industry, rodeos), and direct behavioral expression of dominant belief systems regarding human–animal relations such as meat consumption, on the other. Indeed, those endorsing right-wing attitudes and values are more likely to support and engage in animal exploitation and to self-identify as meat-eaters. Likewise, right-wing adherents tend to consume more meat in daily life.
To date, however, it remains unclear why people scoring higher (vs. lower) on right-wing social attitudes are more accepting of animal exploitation and eat more meat. We propose two psychological mechanisms potentially accounting for these relations. Building on both human intergroup and human–animal relations literatures, we argue that right-wing adherents would not be more accepting of animal exploitation or eat more meat if not for their (a) sense of threat from increasingly popular non-exploitive ideologies toward animals (i.e., veg(etari)anism); and (b) human supremacy beliefs…
We investigate why right-wing ideologies – social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) – positively predict attitudes toward animal exploitation and meat consumption. Two survey studies conducted in heterogeneous community samples (Study 1, N = 260; Study 2, N = 489) demonstrated that right-wing ideologies predict greater acceptance of animal exploitation and more meat consumption through two explaining mechanisms: (a) perceived threat from non-exploitive ideologies to the dominant carnist ideology (for both SDO and RWA) and (b) belief in human superiority over animals (for SDO). These findings hold after controlling for hedonistic pleasure from eating meat. Right-wing adherents do not simply consume more animals because they enjoy the taste of meat, but because doing so supports dominance ideologies and resistance to cultural change. Psychological parallels between human intergroup relations and human–animal relations are considered. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEO: