MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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Misanthropy, Idealism, and Attitudes Towards Animals
Karl L. Wuensch, Kevin W. Jenkins, and G. Michael Poteat
East Carolina University
Author Note
Karl L. Wuensch, Department of Psychology; Kevin W. Jenkins,
Department of Psychology; G. Michael Poteat, Department of Psychology.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Karl L. Wuensch, Department of Psychology, East Carolina University,
Greenville, NC 27858-4353. Electronic mail may be sent to
WuenschK@ECU.edu.
This manuscript was submitted for consideration for publication way
back in 2002, to a journal that does not use APA style. I have reformatted
it to serve as an example of a short APA-style manuscript. I have
annotated it various notes, in this purple font.
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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Abstract
When evaluating the ethical status of an action that harms a nonhuman
animal, one might weigh the benefit to humankind against the cost of the
harm done to the nonhuman. To the extent that one does not like humans
(is misanthropic), one will not be likely to think that benefits to humans can
justify doing harm to nonhumans. We hypothesized that misanthropy
would be less strongly related to support for animal rights among idealists
(who tend not to do cost-benefit analysis) than among nonidealists.
College students (N = 154) completed a questionnaire which included
questions designed to measure their ethical idealism (10 items),
misanthropy (5 items), and attitude towards animal rights and animal
research (28 items). Respondents were classified as being idealistic if
their score on the idealism scale was greater than the median score. The
regression lines for predicting attitude towards animals from misanthropy
differed significantly between idealists and nonidealists. Among
nonidealists there was a significant positive relationship between
misanthropy and support for animal rights, but among idealists the
regression line was flat.
Keywords: animal rights, attitudes, cost-benefit analysis, ethics, ethical
idealism, misanthropy
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Misanthropy, Idealism, and Attitudes About Animals
In the last ten to twenty years the issue of animal rights has
received considerable attention from the popular media in the United
States and Europe. Animal rights advocates have demonstrated,
legislators have passed new laws designed to protect nonhuman animals,
comedians have made numerous jokes about hunters, fishers, and animal
rights activists, and researchers have conducted polls about attitudes
towards animals and animal rights. Professional organizations like the
Animal Behavior Society and various medical and psychological
organizations have studied the problem, revised policy statements, and
attempted to persuade the public that animal research is necessary and
can be conducted in a humane fashion. Twenty years ago it would be a
rare person who had ever heard the phrase "animal rights." Today it is a
rare person who has not, but there is not any strong consensus among the
general public with regard to what sort of rights, if any, should be granted
to nonhuman animals. In a national poll conducted just a few years ago
(Balzar, 1993), respondents were nearly equally divided with respect to
accepting or rejecting statements such as "Animals are just like people in
all important ways."
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Social psychologists have a history of studying the determinants of
differences in attitudes involving issues that receive great attention among
the general public, such as attitudes about race, sexuality, gender,
abortion, etc. In the past few years differences in attitudes about animals
and animal rights have been studied. Can we understand why some
people support animal rights and others do not? What characteristics of
an individual could we use to predict whether he or she is or is not a
supporter of animal rights?
Several researchers have reported that women are more likely than
men to advocate animal rights and oppose animal research (Gallup &
Beckstead, 1988; Herzog, Betchart, & Pittman, 1991; Plous, 1991, 1996a,
1996b; Driscoll, 1992; Galvin & Herzog, 1992a, 1992b; Broida, Tingley,
Kimball, & Miele, 1993; Wuensch & Poteat, 1998; Herzog, 1999). [Notice
that the order of citations, within parentheses, is alphabetical, not
chronological] Attitudes about animals and animal research have been
reported to be associated with age, pet ownership, religious affiliation,
major in school, sex role orientation, political conservatism, vegetarianism,
empathy towards animals, and attitudes about the environment, the
military, and science (Gallup & Beckstead, 1988; Driscoll, 1992; Broida et
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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al., 1993). [ The second citation was given earlier, so should use the “et
al.” notation.]
Forsyth’s (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) has played a
central role in several recent investigations of attitudes about animals.
The EPQ measures two ethical dimensions, idealism and relativism.
People who score high on the idealism dimension believe that ethical
behavior will always lead only to good consequences, never to bad
consequences, and never to a mixture of good and bad consequences.
People who score high on the relativism dimension reject the notion of
universal moral principles, preferring personal and situational analysis of
behavior. Early research with the EPQ showed ethical ideology to be
associated with attitudes towards a variety of controversial issues,
including homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, sex outside of marriage,
and attitudes about the ethics of social psychological research (Schlenker
& Forsyth, 1977; Forsyth, 1980; Forsyth & Pope, 1984; Singh & Forsyth,
1989). More recently, support for animal rights and disapproval of animal
research has been shown to be positively associated with idealism, and
negatively (but weakly) associated with relativism (Galvin & Herzog,
1992a, 1992b; Wuensch & Poteat, 1998). Students’ evaluations of the
effectiveness of anti-animal research literature have also been found to be
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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significantly affected by their gender and idealism (but not relativism)
(Nickell & Herzog, 1996).
In the battle to win the support of the public, animal rights
advocates argue that humans can thrive without engaging in activities that
cause suffering by animals, and animal use advocates argue that the
suffering by animals is little and is justified by the benefit to humankind
that results from research on and other use of animals (Miller, 1985;
Tannenbaum & Rowan, 1985; Driscoll & Bateson, 1988; Dewsbury, 1990;
National Academy of Sciences, 1991; Ulrich, 1991). Information about the
amount of suffering by animals and the magnitude of the benefit to
humankind is the sort of data people would need if they made moral
decisions by doing a cost-benefit analysis, deciding that an action is
ethical if its good consequences outweigh its bad consequences. Many
people do engage in such cost-benefit analysis when deciding whether or
not a particular use of animals is morally correct (Galvin & Herzog, 1992b;
Herzog, Rowan, & Kossow, 2001), but some do not. Idealists believe that
a morally correct action never leads to any bad consequences, so they do
not engage in cost-benefit analysis -- if an action has any bad
consequences, they consider it morally incorrect, regardless of any
concomitant good consequences.
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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The ethical cost-benefit analysis we have described so far assumes
that benefit to humankind is a good consequence, but some persons may
not think highly enough of humans to feel that benefit to humankind is
really much of a good consequence. To the extent that one does not like
humans (is misanthropic), one should not be likely to think that benefits to
humans can justify doing harm to animals. Accordingly, misanthropy is
expected to be associated with support for animal rights in those persons
(nonidealists) who do cost-benefit analysis when evaluating the morality of
using animals. On the other hand, misanthropy should not be related to
support for animal rights in idealists, since idealists do not engage in such
ethical cost-benefit analysis.
The purpose of the research reported here was to investigate the
relationship between misanthropy and attitudes towards animals as
moderated by idealism. We hypothesized that misanthropy would be less
strongly related to support for animal rights among idealists than among
nonidealists.
Method
College students in introductory general psychology (N = 154)
completed a questionnaire which included items designed to measure
their ethical idealism (10 items from D. R. Forsyth’s Ethics Position
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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Questionnaire), misanthropy (5 items), and attitude towards animal rights
(28 items). Most of the participants identified themselves as white (88%)
women (81%) under 20 years of age (88%) in their first year of college
study (78%). All questionnaire items (other than those related to
demographics) were statements with a Likert-type five-point response
scale of agreement. For each scale, the mean response across items was
computed for each respondent.
Reliability for these instruments was estimated using maximized
lambda4, which has been shown to be more consistently accurate than
Cronbach’s alpha and other internal consistency reliability coefficients
(Osburn, 2000). When the number of items was fewer than 10,
maximized lambda4 was computed exactly. When the number of items
was 10 or more, in which case computing the exact maximized lambda is
unreasonably difficult, an approximation was computed (Callender &
Osburn, 1977; Osburn, 2000). Reliability was .83 for the idealism scale,
.78 for the misanthropy scale, and .93 for the animal rights/animal
research scale.
The animal rights scale and the misanthropy scale are presented in
the appendix. You will also find there descriptive statistics for each of the
scales used in the current study. Typical items on the idealism scale are:
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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“The existence of potential harm to others is always wrong, irrespective of
the benefits to be gained,” and “deciding whether or not to perform an act
by balancing the positive consequences of the act against the negative
consequences of the act is immoral.”
Respondents were classified as being idealistic if their score on the
idealism scale was greater than the median score (3.7).
Results
Ignoring idealism, there was a small but statistically significant
correlation between misanthropy and support for animal rights, r = .22, p =
.006, 95% CI [.06. .37]. Regression analysis was employed to test the
prediction that misanthropy would be less strongly related to support for
animal rights among idealists than among nonidealists. A simultaneous
test of slope and intercept indicated that the regression lines for predicting
animal attitude from misanthropy differed significantly between idealists
and nonidealists, F(2, 150) = 3.62, p = .029.
The interaction between idealism and misanthropy was significant,
t(150) = 2.25, p = .026, indicating that the slopes of the two regression
lines differed (steeper for nonidealists than for idealists -- see Figure 1).
The regression lines’ intercepts also differed significantly (higher for
idealists), t(150) = 2.58, p = .01.
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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Support for Animal Rights
3
2.8
idealist
nonidealist
2.6
2.4
2.2
2
1.8
1
2
3
4
Misanthropy
Figure 1. Relationship between misanthropy and support
for animal rights among idealists and nonidealists.
When submitting a manuscript for consideration for
publication, APA wants you to put figures and tables at the end of the
manuscript. I want you put each figure or table in the body of the
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page after first reference to it.
Among nonidealists (n = 91), support for animal rights was
significantly related to misanthropy, animal rights = 1.63 + .3 misanthropy,
r = .36, p < .001, 95% CI [.17, .53] When corrected for attenuation due to
lack of perfect reliability in the variables, the r = .42. Among idealists (n =
63), the regression line was flat, animal rights = 2.40 + 0.02 misanthropy, r
= .02, p = .87, 95% CI [-0.23, +0.27].
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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Regression diagnostics were used to determine if the regression
lines obtained in our analysis were unduly influenced by a few outliers.
Studentized deleted residuals were distributed as would be expected
given a normal error term -- only 5% had values greater than 2. Cook’s D
statistic was used to identify observations which had great influence on
the regression analysis. For the df in our analysis, one would consider
any observation with D > .7 to be one which had a large influence on the
results of the regression analysis. There were no such observations. The
largest value of D was .27, and 96% of the observations had D < .1.
Discussion
The idea to investigate an association between misanthropy and
support for animal rights came to the first author (who was trained as a
comparative psychologist but no longer is involved in research on
nonhumans) after watching the evening news on television. The first part
of the news had cast humankind in such a bad light that he was feeling
quite misanthropic when they covered an animal rights protest. He found
himself agreeing even more than usual with the protesters, and, in an
attempt to explain that, decided it must be due to misanthropy. The idea
of an association between misanthropy and support of animal rights has,
however, occurred to others too. French (1975, p. 390) noted that in
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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Victorian England some persons considered the antivivsectionists to have
"loved animals in proportion to their dislike for humans." More recently,
Herzog (1998) wrote "animal activists are frequently dismissed as antiintellectual misanthropes who prefer kittens to sick children."
Our initial (unpublished) attempts to detect an association between
misanthropy and support of animal rights failed. Then we heard Hal
Herzog speak about his research with the idealism variable, and we
realized that not all persons engage in ethical cost-benefit analysis. In
view of that, we set out to test the hypothesis that the expected
association between misanthropy and animal rights would be found only
among those who are not idealists.
Our currently reported results do show that misanthropy was
associated with support for animal rights, but only among nonidealists.
Idealists believe that ethically correct behavior never leads to bad
consequences, so they tend to be supporters of animal rights, since
human use of nonhuman animals so often involves harming the animal, a
bad consequence -- but idealists do not do ethical cost-benefit analysis, so
whether they are misanthropic or not is unrelated to their support of animal
rights. Nonidealists, on the other hand, do conduct ethical cost-benefit
analysis. If they value humankind, they may decide that the costs of
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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animal use and animal research are justified by the benefits to humankind.
Accordingly, they are not strong supporters of animal rights. Misanthropic
nonidealists discount the value of benefits to humankind (or maybe even
consider them of negative value), and thus cannot justify animal use to
benefit humankind. Consequently, they are supporters of animal rights.
French (1975, p. 390) provides an extreme example of misanthropy
in the well known antivisectionsist Anna Kingsford, who, when explaining
why she attended medical school, wrote:
“I do not love men and women. I dislike them too much to care to
do them any good. They seem to be my natural enemies. It is not
for them that I am taking up medicine and science, not to cure their
ailments, but for the animals and for knowledge generally. I want to
rescue the animals from cruelty and injustice, which are for me the
worst, if not the only sins. And I can’t love both the animals and
those who systematically mistreat them.”
When Dr. Anna Kingsford considered the morality of using animals to
benefit humankind, we can assume that she greatly discounted any
benefit to humankind.
It should be noted that the results of the currently reported study do
not address the question of whether or not animal rights activists are
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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misanthropic. Animal rights activists have been shown to be idealistic
(Galvin & Herzog, 1992a), and misanthropy has now been shown not to
be related to support for animal rights among idealists, suggesting that
misanthropy might not be an important dimension for explaining the
attitudes about animals held by animal rights activists. Whether the typical
animal rights activist is misanthropic or not can only be determined by
study of such activists. If one were to consider valuing the lives of
nonhumans more than the lives of humans to be an indicator of
misanthropy, then there is some evidence of more frequent misanthropy
among activists (7%) than among nonactivists (0%) (Plous, 1991).
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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References
Balzar, J. (1993, December 25). Creatures great - and equal? Los
Angeles Times, pp. 1, 30, 31. [Newspaper article]
Broida, J., Tingley, L., Kimball, R., & Miele, J. (1993). Personality
differences between pro- and anti-vivisectionists. Society and Animals,
1, 129 - 144. [Journal article. Note use of ampersand instead of
“and.”]
Callendar, J. C., & Osburn, H. G. (1977). A method for maximizing and
cross-validating split-half reliability coefficients. Educational and
Psychological Measurement, 37, 819 - 826.
Dewsbury, D. A. (1990). Early interactions between animal psychologists
and animal activists and the founding of the APA Committee on
Precautions in Animal Experimentation. American Psychologist, 45,
315 - 327
Driscoll, J. W. (1992). Attitudes toward animal use. Anthrozoös, 5, 32 39.
Driscoll, J. W., & Bateson, P. (1988). Animals in behavioral research.
Animal Behaviour, 36,1569 - 1574.
Forsyth, D. R. (1980). A taxonomy of ethical ideologies. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 175 - 184.
Forsyth, D. R., & Pope, W. R. (1984). Ethical ideology and judgments of
social psychological research: Multidimensional analysis. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 1365 - 1375. [Order in
reference list is alphabetical by authors’ names, and “Forysth” comes
before “Forsyth & Pope.” If there are two or more with the same
authors, use chronological order, earlier dates first.]
French, R. D. (1975). Antivivisection and medical science in Victorian
society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Book. Notice
that only the first word and the proper adjective start with upper case.]
Gallup, G. G., Jr., & Beckstead, J. W. (1988). Attitudes toward animal
research. American Psychologist, 43, 474 - 476.
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Galvin, S. L., & Herzog, H. A., Jr. (1992a). Ethical ideology, animal rights
activism, and attitudes toward the treatment of animals. Ethics and
Behavior, 2, 141 - 149.
Galvin, S. L. & Herzog, H. A. (1992b). The ethical judgment of animal
research. Ethics and Behavior, 2, 263 - 286. [Notice the use of “a”
and “b” with the date. Without those letters “Galvin & Herzog (1992)”
would be ambiguous. Also note that the order in the references list is
alphabetical by title of the article]
Herzog, H. A. (1998). Understanding animal activism. In L. Hart (Ed.),
Responsible conduct of research in animal behavior (pp. 156 – 183).
New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [Chapter in an edited book.]
Herzog, H. (1999, November). Power, money, and gender: Status
hierarchies and the animal protection movement in the United States.
ISAZ Newsletter, 18, 2 - 5.
Herzog, H. A., Jr., Betchart, N. S., &Pittman, R. B. (1991). Gender, sex
role orientation, and attitudes toward animals. Anthrozoös, 4, 184 191.
Herzog, H., Rowan, A., and Kossow, D. (2001). Social attitudes and
animals. In D. J. Salem & A. N. Rowan (Eds.), The state of the
animals (pp 55 - 69). Gaithersburg, MD: Humane Society Press.
Miller, N. E. (1985). The value of behavioral research on animals.
American Psychologist, 40, 423 - 440.
National Academy of Sciences. (1991). Science, medicine, and animals.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Nickell, D., & Herzog, H. A., Jr. (1996). Ethical ideology and moral
persuasion: Personal moral philosophy, gender, and judgments of proand anti-animal research propaganda. Society and Animals, 4, 53-64.
Osburn, H. G. (2000). Coefficient alpha and related internal consistency
reliability coefficients. Psychological Methods, 5, 343-355.
Plous, S. (1991). An attitude survey of animal rights activists.
Psychological Science, 2, 194-196.
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Plous, S. (1996a). Attitudes toward the use of animals in psychological
research and education: Results from a national survey of
psychologists. American Psychologist, 51, 1167-1180.
Plous, S. (1996b). Attitudes toward the use of animals in psychological
research and education: Results from a national survey of psychology
majors. Psychological Science, 7, 352-358.
Schlenker, B. R., & Forsyth, D. R. (1977). On the ethics of psychological
research. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 369-396.
Singh, B., & Forsyth, D. R. (1989). Sexual attitudes and moral values:
The importance of idealism and relativism. Bulletin of the
Psychonomic Society, 27, 160-162.
Tannenbaum, J., & Rowan, A. N. (1985, October). Rethinking the
morality of animal research. The Hastings Center Report, 32-43.
Ulrich, R. E. (1991). Animal rights, animal wrongs and the question of
balance. Psychological Science, 2, 197-201.
Wuensch, K. L., and Poteat, G. M. (1998). Evaluating the morality of
animal research: Effects of ethical ideology, gender, and purpose.
Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 13, 139-150.
When preparing a manuscript to be submitted for consideration for
publication, APA wants you to double-space the reference list. I want you
to single-space it, but with extra space between each citation and the next.
I also want you to use hanging indentation. Here is how to do that:
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Appendix
The Animal Rights and Misanthropy Scales
Instructions Given to Respondents
This questionnaire was designed to measure your attitudes about a
number of potentially related things. You will find a series of statements
below. Each represents a commonly held opinion and there are no right
or wrong answers. You will probably disagree with some items and agree
with others. We are interested in the extent to which you agree or
disagree with such matters of opinion. Please read each statement
carefully and then indicate the extent of your disagreement/agreement
with each item according to the following scale:
A
B
C
D
E
strongly
disagree
disagree
no opinion
agree
strongly
agree
The Animal Rights Scale
Please indicate your response by filling in the appropriate circle (A,
B, C, D, or E) on the multiple choice answer sheet. Please use a number
2 pencil. Mark only one response for each item. Please do not mark the
questionnaire itself - save a tree by returning the questionnaire unmarked
so we can use it again. Do not put any identifying information (such as
name or social security number) on your answer sheet -- we want your
responses to be confidential.
1. Humans have no right to displace wild animals by converting
wilderness areas into farmlands, cities, and other things designed for
people.
2. Animal research cannot be justified and should be stopped.
3. It is morally wrong to drink milk and eat eggs.
4. A human has no right to use a horse as a means of transportation
(riding) or entertainment (racing).
5. It is wrong to wear leather jackets and pants.
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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6. Most medical research done on animals is unnecessary and invalid.
7. I have seriously considered becoming a vegetarian in an effort to save
animal lives.
8. Pet owners are responsible for preventing their pets from killing other
animals, such as cats killing mice or snakes eating live mice.
9. We need more regulations governing the use of animals in research.
10. It is morally wrong to eat beef and other "red" meat.
11. Insect pests (mosquitoes, cockroaches, flies, etc.) should be safely
removed from the house rather than killed.
12. Animals should be granted the same rights as humans.
13. It is wrong to wear leather belts and shoes.
14. I would rather see humans die or suffer from disease than to see
animals used in research.
15. Having extended basic rights to minorities and women, it is now time
to extend them also to animals.
16. God put animals on Earth for man to use.
17. There are plenty of viable alternatives to the use of animals in
biomedical and behavioral research.
18. Research on animals has little or no bearing on problems confronting
people.
19. New surgical procedures and experimental drugs should be tested on
animals before they are used on people.
20. I am very concerned about pain and suffering in animals.
21. Since many important questions cannot be answered by doing
experiments on people, we are left with no alternatives but to do
animal research.
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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22. It is a violation of an animal's rights to be held captive as a pet by a
human.
23. It is wrong to wear animal fur (such as mink coats).
24. It is appropriate for humans to kill animals that destroy human
property, for example, rats, mice, and pigeons.
25. Most cosmetics research done on animals is unnecessary and invalid.
26. It is morally wrong to eat chicken and fish.
27. Most psychological research done on animals is unnecessary and
invalid.
28. Hunters play an important role in regulating the size of deer
populations.
Scoring Instructions. Numerically code the A,B,C,D,E response scale
as 1,2,3,4,5 -- that is, the higher the number, the greater the agreement
with the statement. Reflect (reverse score) items 16, 19, 21, 24, and 28.
To obtain an overall score, simply compute, for each respondent, the
average (mean) of the 28 items.
Sample Statistics. For the currently reported sample, the mean was
2.38, the median was 2.36, the standard deviation was 0.54, and
skewness was 0.38.
The Misanthropy Scale
1. Humans are by nature basically corrupt.
2. Both history and current events show that human beings are basically
wicked.
3. Planet earth would be better off if humans would just disappear from it.
4. Most people are basically good-natured.
5. I am proud to be a member of the human race.
Scoring Instructions. Score this scale in the same way as the animal
rights scale, reflecting items 4 and 5.
MISANTHROPY, IDEALISM, & ANIMALS
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Sample Statistics. For the current sample, the mean was 2.32, the
median was 2.20, the standard deviation was 0.67, and skewness was
0.45.
Sample Statistics for the Idealism Scale
For the current sample, the mean was 3.65, the median was 3.70,
the standard deviation was 0.53, and skewness was -0.06. Fifteen
respondents had scores exactly equal to the median.
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