Published on 04/17/2022 at 11:33 a.m.,
Reading 2 mins.
Children show more humanity with animals, which for some affects their reluctance to eat meat. But they sometimes become fond of meat as adults. According to a new study, this unexpected change comes from a process of social normalization that children undergo while growing up.
Very sensitive and connected to nature, children have a special relationship with animals, which sometimes seems to disappear in adulthood. Have you ever heard the story of an adult, yet carnivorous, telling that he did not eat meat when he was a child?
Far from being an isolated fact, this phenomenon of children refusing to eat animal products, then doing so when they become adults, was recently the subject of a study published this week in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Change happens in adolescence
British researchers from the University of Exeter interviewed 479 people aged between 9 and 59, classified into three different groups. The objective was to probe them on the relationship they have with a pet like the dog and an animal more traditionally associated with livestock, like the pig.
According to the study, a change seems to take place at the time of adolescence. The children aged 9 to 11 surveyed are thus less likely to eat meat than their elders, in particular those aged between 29 and 59.
NO to diets, YES to WW!
Pets… and others
This is the whole ambivalent character linked to speciesism (the fact of establishing a hierarchical superiority between the human and animal species, in favor of the first). If the ill-treatment inflicted on domestic animals seems unacceptable in the eyes of the majority of the population, the fate reserved for farm animals or hunting game is, for example, better tolerated in people’s minds.
A child, on the other hand, will be less likely to make this distinction and will place all animals in the same place in their heart, the study suggests. “Children are less likely to categorize farm animals as ‘animals we eat’ and consider the consumption of meat and animal products less morally acceptable”the authors of the research pointed out.
“These findings imply that there are key age-related differences in our moral view of an animal’s value, indicating socially constructed development across the lifespan.”they concluded.