Matti Wilks on human-animal interaction and moral circle expansion

“Speciesism being socially learned is probably our most dominant theory of why we think we're getting the results that we're getting. But to be very clear, this is super early research. We have a lot more work to do. And it's actually not just in the context of speciesism that we're finding this stuff. So basically we've run some studies showing that while adults will prioritize humans over even very large numbers of animals in sort of tragic trade-offs, children are much more likely to prioritize humans and animals lives similarly. So an adult will save one person over a hundred dogs or pigs, whereas children will save, I think it was two dogs or six pigs over one person. And this was children that were about five to 10 years old. So often when you look at biases in development, so something like minimal group bias, that peaks quite young.”

• Matti Wilks

What does our understanding of human-animal interaction imply for human-robot interaction? Is speciesism socially learned? Does expanding the moral circle dilute it? Why is there a correlation between naturalness and acceptableness? What are some potential interventions for moral circle expansion and spillover from and to animal advocacy?

Matti Wilks is a lecturer (assistant professor) in psychology at the University of Edinburgh. She uses approaches from social and developmental psychology to explore barriers to prosocial and ethical behavior—right now she is interested in factors that shape how we morally value others, the motivations of unusually altruistic groups, why we prefer natural things, and our attitudes towards cultured meat. Matti completed her PhD in developmental psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia, and was a postdoc at Princeton and Yale Universities.

Topics discussed in the episode:

• Introduction (0:00)
• What matters ethically? (1:00)
• The link between animals and digital minds (3:10)
• Higher vs lower orders of pleasure/suffering (4:15)
• Psychology of human-animal interaction and what that means for human-robot interaction (5:40)
• Is speciesism socially learned? (10:15)
• Implications for animal advocacy strategy (19:40)
• Moral expansiveness scale and the moral circle (23:50)
• Does expanding the moral circle dilute it? (27:40)
• Predictors for attitudes towards species and artificial sentience (30:05)
• Correlation between naturalness and acceptableness (38:30)
• What does our understanding of naturalness and acceptableness imply for attitudes towards cultured meat? (49:00)
• How can we counter concerns about naturalness in cultured meat? (52:00)
• What does our understanding of attitudes towards naturalness imply for artificial sentience? (54:00)
• Interventions for moral circle expansion and spillover from and to animal advocacy (56:30)
• Academic field building as a strategy for developing a cause area (1:00:50)
  

Resources discussed in the episode are available at https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/podcast

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