If you somehow could convince a research group, not selected for caring a lot about animals, to pursue this question in isolation, I’d predict they’d end up with far less animal-friendly results.
I think this is a possible outcome, but not guaranteed. Most people have been heavily socialized to not care about most animals, either through active disdain or more mundane cognitive dissonance. Being “forced” to really think about other animals and consider their moral weight may swing researchers who are baseline “animal neutral” or even “anti-animal” more than you’d think. Adjacent evidence might be the history of animal farmers or slaughterhouse workers becoming convinced animal killing is wrong through directly engaging in it.
I also want to note that most people would be less surprised if a heavy moral weight is assigned to the species humans are encouraged to form the closest relationships with (dogs, cats). Our baseline discounting of most species is often born from not having relationships with them, not intuitively understanding how they operate because we don’t have those relationships, and/or objectifying them as products. If we lived in a society where beloved companion chickens and carps were the norm, the median moral weight intuition would likely be dramatically different.
the history of animal farmers or slaughterhouse workers becoming convinced animal killing is wrong through directly engaging in it
Is this actually much evidence in that direction? I agree that there are many examples of former farmers and slaughterhouse workers that have decided that animals matter much more than most people think, but is that the direction the experience tends to move people? I’m not sure what I’d predict. Maybe yes for slaughterhouse workers but no for farmers, or variable based on activity? For example, I think many conventional factory farming activities like suffocating baby chicks or castrating pigs are things the typical person would think “that’s horrible” but the typical person exposed to that work daily would think “eh, that’s just how we do it”.
I agree and I point to that more so as evidence that even in environments that are likely to foster a moral disconnect (in contrast to researchers steeped in moral analysis) increased concern for animals is still a common enough outcome that it’s an observable phenomenon.
(I’m not sure if there’s good data on how likely working on an animal farm or in a slaughterhouse is to convince you that killing animals is bad. I would be interested in research that shows how these experiences reshape people’s views and I would expect increased cognitive dissonance and emotional detachment to be a more common outcome.)
I think this is a possible outcome, but not guaranteed. Most people have been heavily socialized to not care about most animals, either through active disdain or more mundane cognitive dissonance. Being “forced” to really think about other animals and consider their moral weight may swing researchers who are baseline “animal neutral” or even “anti-animal” more than you’d think. Adjacent evidence might be the history of animal farmers or slaughterhouse workers becoming convinced animal killing is wrong through directly engaging in it.
I also want to note that most people would be less surprised if a heavy moral weight is assigned to the species humans are encouraged to form the closest relationships with (dogs, cats). Our baseline discounting of most species is often born from not having relationships with them, not intuitively understanding how they operate because we don’t have those relationships, and/or objectifying them as products. If we lived in a society where beloved companion chickens and carps were the norm, the median moral weight intuition would likely be dramatically different.
Is this actually much evidence in that direction? I agree that there are many examples of former farmers and slaughterhouse workers that have decided that animals matter much more than most people think, but is that the direction the experience tends to move people? I’m not sure what I’d predict. Maybe yes for slaughterhouse workers but no for farmers, or variable based on activity? For example, I think many conventional factory farming activities like suffocating baby chicks or castrating pigs are things the typical person would think “that’s horrible” but the typical person exposed to that work daily would think “eh, that’s just how we do it”.
I agree and I point to that more so as evidence that even in environments that are likely to foster a moral disconnect (in contrast to researchers steeped in moral analysis) increased concern for animals is still a common enough outcome that it’s an observable phenomenon.
(I’m not sure if there’s good data on how likely working on an animal farm or in a slaughterhouse is to convince you that killing animals is bad. I would be interested in research that shows how these experiences reshape people’s views and I would expect increased cognitive dissonance and emotional detachment to be a more common outcome.)