Similarity messages
Many studies show that emphasizing human-animal-similarity does not always have positive outcomes – it can even be detrimental. Terror Mangement Theory e.g. offers one possible explanation for this effect. So what should animal advocates and animal rights NGOs pay attention to?
Framing matters
In similarity messages the emphasis should focus on bringing animals (cognitively) closer to humans, instead of bringing humans closer to animals. But what’s the difference? Bringing animals closer to humans would mean to emphasize e.g. the intelligence of animals, their ability to experience complex emotions (like empathy, pride, or shame), or their abilities to rationally plan ahead. Bringing humans closer to animals on the other hand would mean to emphasize typically animalistic connotated traits in humans – e.g. stressing that humans can behave aggressively, or instinctively, or want to avoid pain and seek pleasure. While bringing animals closer to humans leads to positive evaluations of many different kinds of animals, bringing humans closer to animals is detrimental for this issue.
Benefits and Spillover
While this contrasting observation has been proven in many studies and is a very widely acknowledged phenomenon in psychological research, one series of studies was concerned with testing this effect very rigorously.
In their study series called „When Closing the Human–Animal Divide Expands Moral Concern“ Bastian, Costello, Loughnan and Hodson (2012)1 tested this framing effect. In the first study participants had to simply write an essay regarding the similarities of humans and animals – so no framing was actually set. The participants that brought animals closer to humans were more morally inclusive to animals, than those who brought humans closer to animals. The results could still mean that people who tend to bring animals closer to humans, tend to be more morally inclusive (so that it’s not really a „framing“ effect). To test a causal framing effect, study 2 was an experiment in which the participants had to read one of two editorials (humans -> animals, and animals -> humans). Again, the group of participants, who read the text that brought animals closer to humans, were much more morally inlusive than the other group.
In a third study the authors were able to show that bringing animals closer to humans even leads to more positive evaluations of marginalized human outgroups (e.g. immigrants). This idea stems from the theory of dehumanization. When a group of people is interested in increasing a status difference towards another group, the outgroup is often framed as animal-like. (Here is a great example of dehumanization usage by former US-president Donald Trump).
A study by Costello and Hodson (2010)2 showed, that bringing animals closer to humans, leads to a higher humanization, and by that to more positive attitudes towards other people.
Especially activists and animal rights NGOs should therefore be aware of this effect when messages of similarity are emphasized. Since the right framing not only helps to alleviate speciecism, but also increases moral inclusiveness of animals and even marginalized human outgroups.
Sources
1 Bastian, B., Costello, K., Loughnan, S., & Hodson, G. (2012). When closing the human–animal divide expands moral concern: The importance of framing. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3(4), 421–429. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550611425106
2 Costello, K., & Hodson, G. (2010). Exploring the roots of dehumanization: The role of animal–human similarity in promoting immigrant humanization. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 13(3), 397. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430210367867
studies in green. 