The morality of eating meat: the role of social norms in childhood and adolescence

吃肉的道德：社会规范在童年和青少年时期的作用

• 批准号: 2869037
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2869037
• 关键词: morality; eating; meat; role; social

Diets high in animal-derived foods are associated with negative environmental and personal health outcomes (Rust et al., 2020). Yet, eating animals is highly normative in Western cultures (USDA, 2018). Food preferences are formed in childhood, a developmental period characterized by enhanced moral concern for animal welfare (McGuire et al., 2022). At the same time, children use social norms to navigate moral situations. In the context of food, no research has investigated the interplay between age and social norms. As meat-eating norms become internalized during development, dietary norms likely guide evaluations of meat-eating acceptability from an early age. This raises important questions that will be addressed in the proposed research. First, when do children begin to understand it may be more socially acceptable to eat some animals compared to others? Second, how do children evaluate and justify meat-eating behaviour in contexts where social norms are especially salient (e.g., Christmas), compared to mundane consumption. And third, how are peers who defy social norms of meat-eating evaluated? Human relationships with non-human animals can involve a moral conflict between caring for certain animals, while tacitly endorsing harm against others through consumption. This "meat-paradox" fosters a state of cognitive dissonance, where individuals recognise the inconsistency between their dietary behaviour and their moral concern for animals (Rothgerber, 2020). Social norms are one powerful tool used to minimize this conflict. Prior research has focused on the 4 Ns of meat-eating rationalization, a collection of self-serving justifications which state eating meat is natural, normal, necessary, and nice (Piazza et al., 2015). However, limited empirical work has investigated how social norms are represented in children's and adolescents' evaluations of meat-eating behaviour. This is important, as the emerging salience of social norms has been shown to influence children's evaluation and reasoning in other decision-making domains, such as resource allocation (McGuire et al., 2017), social exclusion (Hitti & Killen, 2015), and evaluating peers who deviate from ingroup expectations (McGuire et al., 2019). The proposed project will, for the first time, investigate how developmental trends in social norm understanding influence children's and adolescents' evaluations of behaviour in the context of meat-eating. Moreover, the research will conduct studies using novel paradigms to examine how children and adolescents evaluate a deviant peer group member who challenges the established meat-eating norm. This question is particularly important in the context of food, as deviant individuals represent potential changemakers, challenging normative practises in favour of more sustainable plant-based alternatives. Therefore, how people react to these deviants has the potential to reinforce or change existing social norms.

动物性食品含量高的饮食与负面的环境和个人健康结果有关（Rust等人，2020年）。然而，在西方文化中，吃动物是非常规范的（USDA, 2018）。食物偏好是在儿童时期形成的，这是一个以对动物福利的道德关注增强为特征的发展期（McGuire et al., 2022）。与此同时，孩子们利用社会规范来驾驭道德情境。在食物的背景下，没有研究调查年龄和社会规范之间的相互作用。随着肉食规范在发育过程中逐渐内化，饮食规范可能会从早期开始指导对肉食可接受性的评估。这就提出了一些重要的问题，这些问题将在拟议的研究中得到解决。首先，孩子们什么时候开始明白，吃某些动物比吃其他动物更容易被社会接受？其次，与日常消费相比，在社会规范特别突出的情况下（例如，圣诞节），儿童如何评估和证明食肉行为。第三，人们如何评价那些不遵守社会吃肉规范的同龄人？人类与非人类动物的关系可能涉及一种道德冲突，一方面照顾某些动物，另一方面默许通过消费来伤害其他动物。这种“肉类悖论”助长了一种认知失调的状态，在这种状态下，个人认识到他们的饮食行为与他们对动物的道德关注之间的不一致（Rothgerber, 2020）。社会规范是将这种冲突最小化的有力工具。先前的研究主要集中在肉食合理化的4ns上，这是一组自我服务的理由，表明吃肉是自然的、正常的、必要的和好的（Piazza等人，2015）。然而，有限的实证工作调查了社会规范是如何在儿童和青少年对食肉行为的评价中表现出来的。这一点很重要，因为新出现的社会规范已被证明会影响儿童在其他决策领域的评估和推理，如资源分配（McGuire et al., 2017）、社会排斥（Hitti & Killen, 2015），以及评估偏离群体内期望的同伴（McGuire et al., 2019）。拟议的项目将首次调查社会规范理解方面的发展趋势如何影响儿童和青少年在吃肉背景下对行为的评价。此外，该研究将使用新的范式来研究儿童和青少年如何评价一个挑战既定吃肉规范的越轨同伴群体成员。这个问题在食品领域尤为重要，因为离经叛道的个体代表着潜在的变革者，挑战着支持更可持续的植物性替代品的规范做法。因此，人们对这些越轨者的反应有可能加强或改变现有的社会规范。