Hannah Somers and Erynn Spanbauer, “Terrible, Horrible, Vile Creatures”
Mentor: Christopher Lawson, Educational Psychology, Education (School of)
Poster #169
This study is focused on exploring how children’s and adult’s attitudes about “good” and “bad” animals impact their ethic of care toward those animals. The participants will consist of children aged 4-6 who completed an in-person administered survey and adults who completed an online survey. Participants were randomly assigned to a condition in which they learned either a “positive” or “negative” fact about an animal. Some participants received only the fact, while other participants were also given an explanation as to why the animal performs such a behavior. Data collection is ongoing, however, we expect to find when people have an explanation for why an animal will behave the way they do, this will influence the degree to which they exhibit an ethic of care towards an animal. We hope the results of this study will inform us about the cognitive and emotional processes that people undergo when thinking about animals and their wellbeing.