From a young age, children are deeply curious about animals. Stable patterns exist in the types of attitudes children display towards different kinds of animals: they love pets, value animals that are beautiful, and fear snakes and spiders (Borgi & Cirulli, 2015, https://doi.org/10.2752/089279315X14129350721939). Until recently, we’ve known little about what children think about the moral standing of animals, particularly relative to other entities, including humans. In this review, we synthesize the literature examining children’s perceptions of the moral worth of animals. We present factors about the animal, and factors about the judge (the child), shown to impact children’s evaluations of animal moral worth. Based on current evidence, we make the claim that children grant animals a high moral standing early on in childhood, but that this decreases during late childhood, throughout adolescence, and into adulthood. We provide some suggestions for the cognitive and cultural mechanisms that might drive these differences, and make recommendations for the field going forward.
Understanding the moral value we place on animals is critical to understanding our relationships with them. Recent years have seen a growing interest in this research topic. One question of particular interest has been the development of these attitudes—how do children think about and value animals across development?
Despite the interest in understanding children’s moral judgements about animals, the field lacks a cohesive review of the relevant methods and findings, the key takeaways and implications of these findings, and the areas for future research. That was the aim of this review.
After reviewing more than 70 papers, we detail the methods used to study how children value animals, and identify a number of factors that shape these judgements. These include factors about the animal (sentience, mental life, intelligence, beauty, and risk/disgust) and factors about the child (age, gender/sex, pet ownership, diet, cultural environment). We lay out the implications of these findings for human relationships with animals, and also make suggestions for future research.
These findings offer us a cohesive understanding of factors that shape the way that children value animals. This helps to characterize our relationship with and treatment of animals in society, and understand how our attitudes are developed and maintained.
Human relationships with animals are dynamic. We care deeply for our pets, inviting them into our homes and investing substantial resources into their care. Yet we abhor mosquitoes, spiders, and rats, rapidly ridding them from our homes with sprays and deterrents. And we farm and eat cows, pigs, and chickens, subjecting them to living conditions that negatively impact their health and wellbeing. While we know that human adults typically place the moral standing of nonhuman animals (herein referred to as animals) beneath that of humans (
In this review, we seek to synthesize current evidence on how children morally value animals relative to other entities We include a list of additional relevant papers beyond the scope of this review in the
Understanding how children value animals has important implications. First, tracking when these attitudes emerge in children, and how they shift alongside key developmental milestones, can help inform our understanding of the mechanisms that shape our moral concern—both for animals and for others more generally. Second, it can help us to understand how these attitudes may (or may not) shape behaviors—such as care expressed towards animals (
What does it mean to think an animal has moral worth? The concept of moral worth is multifaceted, with multiple definitions put forward in psychological literature. Moral worth has been defined as the belief that an organism or entity has inherent value, and is entitled to safety from harm (
The field of psychology has recently turned to the philosophical concept of ‘moral circles’ to help map who we do and do not think of as worthy of moral concern. Moral circles consist of the figurative ‘moral boundaries’ we place around certain groups of people and animals, which mark the relative levels of responsibility we feel for their wellbeing and care. For example,
But how do our circles change across childhood?
It is also worth asking what exactly is being captured in children’s judgements of moral concern. A recent study asked children to report how much they liked, knew about, or cared about animals (as well as other entities), finding that they displayed different patterns of prioritization across animals according to these three constructs (
Reflecting the multifaceted concept of moral concern, researchers have used an array of measures to capture children’s moral attitudes towards animals. We describe the most common measures used below (refer to
Authors | Age Range | Sample Size | Sample Country | Measure Type | Focal IVsa | DVs | Identified Age Differences?b | Identified Gender Differences?b | Identified Country Differences?b |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
9–15 years | 562 children | Norway | Questionnaire | N/A | Liking; Urban vs rural; Interests in wildlife; Pet ownership | Yes | Yes | N/A | |
3–6 years; adults | 82 children; 58 adults | United Kingdom | Questionnaire; Experimental | Infantile features (yes or no); Species; Pet ownership | Cuteness; Attention | N/A | No | N/A | |
3–6 years | 282 children | Italy | Card-sorting | Species | Liking | N/A | Yes | N/A | |
8–12 years | 359 children | Spain | Vignette | Attractiveness; Intervention or Control | Harm (degrees of okayness) | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
4–12 years | 482 children | Spain | Vignette | Behavior type; Nature exposure; Urban vs rural | Harm (degrees of okayness) | Yes | N/A | N/A | |
12 years | 228 children | Costa Rica, Germany, Ukraine | Questionnaire | Country | Fear; Disgust | N/A | N/A | Yes | |
8–10 years | 43 children | Portugal | Questionnaire; Intervention | Intervention or Control; Pre or post-test | Sentience, Welfare needs, Animal use acceptability | N/A | No | N/A | |
6–13 years | 1217 children | United Kingdom | Questionnaire | Species | Pet ownership | Yes | No | N/A | |
6–10 years; adults | 241 children; 152 adults | United Kingdom | Questionnaire; Dilemma | Pain; Intelligence; Harmfulness; Similarity; Aesthetics; Ability; Utility; Eating habits | Provide medicine (yes or no) | Yes | No | N/A | |
7–12 years | 60 children | United States | Vignette | Animal category | Harm (degrees of okayness) | No | No | N/A | |
6–7, 9–10, 12–13, 15–16 years | 120 children | United States | Questionnaire | N/A | Fear; Caring; Welfare needs; Anthropocentric or biocentric orientation | Yes | N/A | N/A | |
6–16 years | 267 children; adults | United States | Questionnaire | N/A | Knowledge; Liking | Yes | Yes | N/A | |
6 years | 44 children | South Korea | Card-sorting | Physical features | Moral character (good or bad) | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
9–11 years; adults | 119 children; 360 adults | United Kingdom | Questionnaire; Card-sorting | Entity | Entity categorization (food, pet or object); Animal use acceptability | No | N/A | N/A | |
4–9 years | 151 children | Australia | Card-sorting | Entity | Caring | Yes | Yes | N/A | |
4–9 years | 281 children | Australia | Card-sorting | Entity | Caring, Liking, or Knowledge | Yes | Yes | N/A | |
13–14 years | 154 children | United States | Questionnaire; Intervention | Intervention type | Attitudes; Pet interactions; Pet ownership | N/A | No | N/A | |
5 years | 94 children | Spain | Questionnaire | Entity | Emotional attributions | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
16–30 years old | 425 young adults | Asia, Europec | Questionnaire | Entity; Country | Mental capacities; Animal use acceptability | N/A | Yes | Yes | |
10–15 years | 1297 children | Slovakia | Questionnaire | Pet ownership; Species (popular, unpopular) | Attitudes; Knowledge | N/A | Yes | N/A | |
11–13 years | 319 children | Germany | Questionnaire; Intervention | Intervention or Control; Pre or post-test | Disgust; Fear | N/A | Yes | N/A | |
9–12 years | 1772 children | India | Questionnaire | Pre or post-test | Attitudes; Empathy | Yes | N/A | N/A | |
4–10 years | 126 children | Australia | Questionnaire; Experimental | Mental capacities; Moral standing | Harm (degrees of okayness) | Yes | N/A | N/A | |
10–15 years | 826 children | Croatia | Questionnaire | N/A | Pet ownership; Empathy; Prosocial orientation; Pet attachment | N/A | Yes | N/A | |
11–15 years | 650 children | United Kingdom | Questionnaire | Pet ownership; Species | Uses (degree of okayness) | Yes | Yes | N/A | |
5–9 years | Children; adults | United States | Questionnaire; Dilemma | Species; Sentience; Intelligence; Exposure | Save: yes or no | No | No | N/A | |
9–10 years | 1119 children | China | Questionnaire | Nature contact; Urbanization; Species | Biophilia, Biophobia, Conservation attitudes | N/A | Yes | N/A |
aFocal IVs are independent variables tested excepting Age, Gender or Country, which are listed in other columns.bThese columns indicate whether Age, Gender or Country differences were found in each of the studies. ‘Yes' means that significant differences were found between levels/categories of these variables. No means that no significant differences were found between categories. N/A means not applicable as this variable was not measured in the current study.cThis study recruited students in the United Kingdom who were nationals from: Czech Republic, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latin America, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Early research into children’s attitudes toward animals was primarily interview-based. Researchers would ask open-ended questions (e.g., ‘what would you do if you found a spider in the dining room of your house?’;
Recently, researchers have employed standardized Likert scales in order to quantify children’s moral attitudes in a more systematic way. Children are asked a question (e.g., “If someone kicked this animal, how much pain would it feel?”) and asked to respond on an ordinal scale (e.g.,
In sorting tasks researchers present children with representations (e.g., pictures) of entities to be ranked or sorted. These tasks are open-ended, where children select as many animals as they wish and sort them into categories freely. For example, children sorted pet, food, high sentience and low sentience animals according to how much they cared about them (a lot, a little or not at all;
In prioritization tasks, children are presented with ethical dilemmas with two (or more) possible outcomes and asked to make a decision about which is the best outcome. For example,
Across these measures, researchers have identified factors which appear to shape who children do (and do not) grant moral status to. To date, much of this work has focused on factors about the entity being judged (e.g., perceived sentience, perceived beauty etc.) and relatively less has focused on factors about the judge (e.g., age, political orientation, etc.). This is despite research demonstrating that factors about the judge account for at least as much variance as factors about the entity (see
Sentience is a broad and difficult concept to capture. However, it may be defined as an entity’s ability to feel physical pain and negative emotions (
However, in other studies children do not factor sentience into their judgments of moral concern. When asked to rate animals on sentient dimensions such as feeling pain, children’s evaluations had no impact on the order in which children chose to give medicine to the animals (
Children might also evaluate the richness of an organism’s mental life. That might include its capacity to think, feel emotions, or act with intention (
While intelligence is arguably a narrow component of mental life, we think it is important to distinguish perceptions of broad mental life from intelligence when considering their roles in shaping moral value.
Several studies have found that the perceived intelligence of an animal (e.g.; how smart or clever they are) is predictive of its moral standing. For example, both
Anthropomorphism is common in children’s storybooks and movies, where animal characters have emotions, thoughts, and speech like humans do. There appears to be a relationship between anthropomorphism and moral concern: research shows that children who use anthropomorphic language to describe animals tend to grant them higher moral standing (
One factor that consistently influences children’s ratings of animal moral worth is physical appearance. If an animal is perceived as attractive or beautiful, it is more likely to be ascribed moral worth, compared to when it is conceived of as unattractive or ugly (
Children will also judge moral transgressions as more morally wrong when they are made towards attractive animals.
Whether or not an animal is perceived to be dangerous or disgusting appears to have an impact on its perceived moral standing. Children consistently report feeling negative emotions, such as fear, surprise and disgust, towards insects, crustaceans and reptiles (
Children from multiple countries report a dislike of reptiles and insects, suggesting this aversion might be evolutionarily adaptive (
Age is an important factor that shapes moral concern towards animals. Children are repeatedly shown to grant more moral worth to animals than adults do (
Young children grant high levels of moral standing to animals. When asked to evaluate how much they cared about a range of entities, young children aged 4–5 years consistently report caring ‘a lot’ about a range of animals (
In middle childhood, children’s valuation of animals overall, and in comparison with human entities, decreases significantly (
Reflecting this, in middle childhood children consider multiple attributes when deciding which animals to grant moral concern to. Eight to 10-year-olds granted more moral standing to animals they thought were beautiful, intelligent and similar to humans. They also considered potential utility in their decisions: animals deemed more edible were afforded more moral standing (
In adolescence, children tend to report the least interest in animals and nature. A decline in reported interest in animals and a wish to conserve nature has been found from 9–15 years of age (
While trends of decreasing moral concern for animals have been found in several studies (
Females typically ascribe higher moral worth to a range of animals than males (
In one study, female high school students also reported a stronger connection to nature than male students, and felt a greater sense of responsibility for caring for it (
Children who have experience living amongst, and caring for pets, often grant a range of animals greater moral standing.
The choice to eat (or abstain from) meat might also shape, or be influenced by, children’s moral judgements about animals. While substantial work is underway exploring these links in adults (
Many researchers acknowledge that a child’s cultural environment shapes their moral attitudes towards animals (
However, a small number of studies are attempting to break this trend. One cross-cultural study examined young adults’ (aged 16–30 years-old) moral attitudes in several European and Asian countries. The authors found that young adults from Asian cultures reported lower levels of moral concern for animal suffering, but revered animal life at similar levels to young adults from European cultures (
Similarly, most children tested live in urban environments. Some research finds differences in children’s perceptions of animals depending on whether they live in urban or rural environments. Children living in rural areas have higher factual knowledge about animals (
We consider it crucial that future research prioritizes sampling from a diverse range of cultural environs, including small-scale subsistence communities and remote populations. Only with broader sampling can we begin to identify the underlying mechanisms driving variation and similarity in children’s valuation of animals across different contexts.
Are there factors which shift children towards granting greater moral status to animals? A substantial amount of research finds that children’s attitudes towards animals become more positive after a child has interacted physically with a companion animal (
More intervention-based research is sorely needed, ideally with comprehensive, longer-term follow ups. For instance, very few interventions have targeted young children between 3 and 6 years of age. However, given that younger and older children appear to ascribe moral worth based on different factors, interventions that might suit older children, such as those emphasizing the intelligent behavior of animals, may not be successful with younger children. Rather, those that focus on developing a positive emotional connection might work best (
When synthesizing across the findings listed in this review, it appears that younger children are more willing to include a range of animals within their circles of concern than older children. Further, the specific dimensions that appear to predict their evaluations of moral worth vary from those used by adults. However, many open research questions remain. We still do not know the cognitive and social mechanisms that underpin these moral attitudes, nor which factors drive the apparent shift in attitudes between childhood and adulthood. For this, both cross-sectional and longitudinal work is needed. We also lack the research to determine how these attitudes may reflect children’s behavior towards animals in real-world contexts. Finally, as demonstrated in this review, the results appear to vary as a function of the types of measures used and participants sampled—the latter point being particularly problematic given the systematic oversampling of WEIRD populations in developmental psychology (
Despite the clear need for more research, the field has made substantial progress in understanding the development of our attitudes towards animals. The authors of this piece consider these findings tentatively optimistic. Children, especially younger children, appear to hold caring and compassionate attitudes towards animals, and value them much more similarly to humans than their adult counterparts. This is also reflected in young people’s moral attitudes towards nature and the environment more broadly; with the huge push from young people in the climate movement as just one example (
The authors declare no funding support for the manuscript
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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