I wonder if EAAs might think that the main effect of their animal advocacy is not necessarily the immediate meat consumption change, but more the longer term moral circle expansion. For example Jacy Reese from the Sentience Institute recently argued in this direction. If so, it might be more interesting to test for the level of speciesism or level of empathy towards animals before and after those interventions. I’d guess that decreasing speciesism is easier than causing a change in consumption habits, so for moral circle expansion purposes those results could be encouraging, correct?
Perhaps the impact on changing the Suffering Attitude could be important here. It’s not clear yet to me how enduring this attitude change is, especially extended into the far future, but you probably could put some sort of value on it? I’d be interested in further testing on this.
Thank you for this!
I wonder if EAAs might think that the main effect of their animal advocacy is not necessarily the immediate meat consumption change, but more the longer term moral circle expansion. For example Jacy Reese from the Sentience Institute recently argued in this direction. If so, it might be more interesting to test for the level of speciesism or level of empathy towards animals before and after those interventions. I’d guess that decreasing speciesism is easier than causing a change in consumption habits, so for moral circle expansion purposes those results could be encouraging, correct?
Perhaps the impact on changing the Suffering Attitude could be important here. It’s not clear yet to me how enduring this attitude change is, especially extended into the far future, but you probably could put some sort of value on it? I’d be interested in further testing on this.
The speciesism scale that was recently published by an EA psychologist might be useful for this purpose.
Ha, cool, you were also involved in the Sentience Institute study about attitudes towards US farm animals that probably also contains useful methodology in this direction.