Opinion Science - #17: How We Think About Animals with Kristof Dhont

#17: How We Think About Animals with Kristof Dhont

08/03/20 • 41 min

Kristof Dhont studies the psychology behind humans’ complicated feelings about animals. In particular, his research looks at how the existence of “speciesism” can stem from the same psychological factors that also produce other social prejudices. In this episode, Kristof and I talk about how people avoid connecting meat to the animals it comes from, how a social dominance worldview gives rise to speciesism, and what psychology can (and can’t) tell us about effective advocacy.

Check out Dr. Dhont’s new book: Why We Love and Exploit Animals: Bridging Insights from Academia and AdvocacyAnd as I mention at the end of the episode, a few years ago, I wrote my own vegan cookbook: Vegan Spanish Cooking.

Some of the things that come up in this episode:

How people disconnect “meat” from the animals it comes from (Kunst & Hohle, 2016)
Why people still eat meat even when they object to its production (“the meat-paradox”; Bastian & Loughnan, 2016)
Denying animals’ “minds” to justify meat-eating (Bastian, Loughnan, Haslamn, & Radke, 2011)
“Social dominance orientation” (see this helpful summary)
Connecting social dominance and speciesism (Dhont et al., 2014; 2016)
How dehumanization reflects treating animals as lesser beings (Costello & Hodson, 2010)

For a transcript of this show, visit the episode's webpage: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/how-we-think-about-animals-with-kristof-dhont/
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Some of the things that come up in this episode:

How people disconnect “meat” from the animals it comes from (Kunst & Hohle, 2016)
Why people still eat meat even when they object to its production (“the meat-paradox”; Bastian & Loughnan, 2016)
Denying animals’ “minds” to justify meat-eating (Bastian, Loughnan, Haslamn, & Radke, 2011)
“Social dominance orientation” (see this helpful summary)
Connecting social dominance and speciesism (Dhont et al., 2014; 2016)
How dehumanization reflects treating animals as lesser beings (Costello & Hodson, 2010)

Previous Episode

#16: Implicit Bias with Mahzarin Banaji

Mahzarin Banaji is a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In the 90s, she and her colleagues pioneered the research in social psychology on implicit bias. They are perhaps best known for creating the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which purports to measure the preferences that people are unable or unwilling to say they have. Using this tool, psychologists have arrived at fascinating findings about bias, which have spawned a productive (and sometimes contentious) field of research. Together with Anthony Greenwald, Dr. Banaji wrote the popular book, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.

I talked with Mahzarin about her early days studying psychology and what prompted her to study implicit bias. She also shared new research on how implicit biases have changed over time and what this means for how to achieve social progress.

If you’re interested in the IAT—the test that researchers use to measure implicit bias—you can take one yourself at the official Project Implicit website.

You can also check out one of Mahzarin’s recent projects: Outsmarting Human Minds. It’s a website devoted to bringing insights from social psychology to the public.

Finally, I usually link to a bunch of primary articles that come up in the episode, but we covered a lot of ground in this one! However, we spent a lot of time on a recent paper led by Mahzarin’s graduate student, Tessa Charlesworth, on how implicit biases have changed over time (Charlesworth & Banaji, 2019). For an accessible summary of this research, check out their article in Harvard Business Review.

For a transcript of this show, visit the episode's webpage: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/implicit-bias-with-mahzarin-banaji/
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Next Episode

#18: Health Communication with Allison Earl

Allison Earl studies the challenges of getting health information to people who need it. Her research looks at how people react defensively to information about their health and how to improve it. In this episode, she shares her research on people's tendency to avoid threatening health information and how simple meditation exercises can make people more open to these kinds of messages.
Some things that come up in this episode:

Targeting health information to specific groups makes people feel judged (Derricks & Earl, 2019)
Rejecting information about stimatized health issues (Earl, Nisson, & Albarracín, 2015)
Race disparities in attention to HIV-prevention information (Earl et al., 2016)
Trigger warnings as a way to get people ready for emotional information (Gainsburg & Earl, 2018)
Meditation makes people more open to threatening health information (Takahashi & Earl, 2020)

For a transcript of this show, visit the episode's webpage: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/health-communication-with-allison-earl
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Opinion Science - #17: How We Think About Animals with Kristof Dhont

Transcript

Andy Luttrell:

When I was in college, every so often a man would appear outside the library with a stack of pamphlets and the will to stand there all day long. As people would walk nearby, he’d hold out a pamphlet and gently plead, “Help stop violence,” over, and over, and over again. Facebook pages would pop up as a tribute to the Help Stop Violence Guy. It was a small campus, so everybody knew who this person was, but the attention he got wasn’t always kind. Th