Diet predicts mind and moral concern towards a broad range of animal categories

A compelling body of research demonstrates that diet (e.g. vegetarianism) plays an important role in the moral concern people grant to animals. However, this research has focused mostly on ‘food’ animals, leaving us with limited understanding of the scope of this effect. We investigated how vegans/vegetarians (veg*ns) and omnivores attribute mind (Study 1) and moral standing (Study 2) across a wide range of animal categories. In Study 1, veg*ns perceived greater mental capacities for most animal categories. Both veg*ns and omnivores gave some categories lesser ratings than others (e.g. evolutionarily distant vs. close to humans), suggesting that veg*ns and omnivores follow similar patterns of mind perception. In Study 2, however, veg*ns both attributed animals greater moral standing overall and gave similar ratings across categories (e.g. toward ‘liked’ animals such as rabbits and ‘disliked’ animals such as rats), whereas omnivores drew sharper distinctions between categories. These studies demonstrate that meat avoidance is a meaningful factor not only in the perceptions of animals that people eat, but also other animals.