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.

富含动物源性食品的饮食与负面的环境和个人健康结果相关（Rust 等人，2020）。然而，在西方文化中，吃动物是高度规范的（USDA，2018）。食物偏好是在童年时期形成的，这是一个以对动物福利的道德关注增强为特征的发展时期（McGuire et al., 2022）。与此同时，孩子们利用社会规范来应对道德状况。在食物方面，没有研究调查年龄和社会规范之间的相互作用。随着食肉规范在发育过程中内化，饮食规范可能会从小就指导对食肉可接受性的评估。这提出了将在拟议研究中解决的重要问题。首先，孩子们什么时候开始明白，与其他动物相比，吃某些动物可能更容易被社会接受？其次，与平常的消费相比，在社会规范特别突出的背景下（例如圣诞节），儿童如何评估和证明食肉行为的合理性。第三，如何评价那些违背食肉社会规范的同龄人？人类与非人类动物的关系可能会涉及照顾某些动物与默认通过消费伤害他人之间的道德冲突。这种“肉类悖论”助长了一种认知失调的状态，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）。社会规范是减少这种冲突的有力工具。先前的研究主要集中在食肉合理化的 4N 方面，即一系列自私的理由，表明吃肉是自然的、正常的、必要的和美好的（Piazza 等，2015）。然而，有限的实证工作调查了儿童和青少年对肉食行为的评价如何体现社会规范。这一点很重要，因为社会规范的显着性已被证明会影响儿童在其他决策领域的评估和推理，例如资源分配（McGuire等人，2017）、社会排斥（Hitti＆Killen，2015）以及评估偏离群体内期望的同龄人（McGuire等人，2019）。该项目将首次调查社会规范理解的发展趋势如何影响儿童和青少年对肉食行为的评估。此外，该研究将使用新颖的范式进行研究，以研究儿童和青少年如何评价挑战既定肉食规范的异常同龄群体成员。这个问题在食品领域尤为重要，因为异常个体代表着潜在的变革者，挑战规范做法，支持更可持续的植物性替代品。因此，人们对这些异常行为的反应有可能强化或改变现有的社会规范。