Read the essay,"The Psychology of Eating Animals" andwrite a 250 word summary of the essay.
Summary Writing Rubric Summary Writing Rubric Assessment Criteria: · Includes the author’s main idea/concept (thesis) · Includes the most important points/information from the body of the essay · Is in your own words · Includes points in the same order as the original essay · Shows a clear understanding of the original essay · Paraphrasing of the main idea and significant points is accurate and skillful Sample Associations between Use of Social Network Sites and Lower Well-Being,” by Jenna L. Clark, Sara B. Algoe, and Melanie C. Green Research has shown a relationship between using social media sites and reduced well-being, and the authors theorize that these sites can cause harm when they fail to satisfy needs of belonging. Users may experience isolation if a site is used simply for “‘social snacking,’” instead of interaction, though they may believe they are meeting social needs. Studies have linked frequent self-comparison with depression and envy as users may not acknowledge that the self presented on these sites is manufactured, not real. Research suggests that a negative association between social media use and mental state is due to social comparison: people who habitually compare themselves to others use Facebook more, resulting in reduced self-esteem and de-valuing their own accomplishments. Read the essay, "The Psychology of Eating Animals" and write a 250 word summary of the essay. The Psychology of Eating Animals Steve Loughnan, Brock Bastian, and Nick Haslam (2496 words) Setting the Context “The Psychology of Animals” represents a common type of academic essay that reviews related studies on a topic while using logical and clear organization. The essay annotations that follow illustrate many of the features and conventions of academic essays as discussed in Chapter 9. Understanding these conventions will help you read all the essays in Section VI. Other annotations refer to effective writing strategies discussed in Chapter 1 and other chapters. Paying attention to these strategies will help with coherence and clarity in your writing. Source: From Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2014. Reprinted with permission of SAGE Publications; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. Abstract An abstract is a condensed summary of the article and usually includes the topic and purpose, the method, the results, and the conclusions. Most people both eat animals and care about animals. Research has begun to examine the psychological processes that allow people to negotiate this “meat paradox.” To understand the psychology of eating animals, we examine characteristics of the eaters (people), the eaten (animals), and the eating (the behaviour). People who value masculinity, enjoy meat and do not see it as a moral issue, and find dominance and inequality acceptable are most likely to consume animals. Perceiving animals as highly dissimilar to humans and as lacking mental attributes, such as the capacity for pain, also supports meat eating. In addition to these beliefs, values, and perceptions, the act of eating meat triggers psychological processes that regulate negative emotions associated with eating animals. We conclude by discussing the implications of this research for understanding the psychology of morality. 1 Most people eat meat. They do so fully aware that it comes from animals, at the cost of their lives. The rate at which we eat animals is truly staggering. The average American consumes approximately 120 kg (264 lb) of meat annually (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2013), an appetite fed by the slaughter of 10 billion land animals (90 per cent are chickens; Joy, 2010). Globally, the average person consumes an estimated 48 kg (106 lb) of meat annually, requiring over 50 billion land animals (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2013). We have eaten meat for millennia, and our meat consumption predates human civilization (Rose & Marshall, 1996). Many academic essays include a literature review in their introductions where the authors summarize the results of studies related to their own. Other academic essays, like this one, summarize results throughout the essay. 2 The avidity of our meat consumption seems to imply that we do not care about animals. This is clearly not correct. Most people find animal suffering emotionally disturbing and morally repugnant (Allen et al., 2002; Plous, 1993). As our meat consumption grows, so too do our expenditures on pets (American Pet Products Association, 2013) and the legal rights we afford animals (Tischler, 2012). This reflects the “meat paradox”: Most people care about animals and do not want to see them harmed but engage in a diet that requires them to be killed and, usually, to suffer (Herzog, 2010; Joy, 2010; Singer, 1975). Despite this suffering and premature death conflicting with people’s beliefs about how animals should be treated, most people continue to eat meat. This paradox may not apply to all forms of meat eating (e.g., the eating of roadkill), may apply differently to meat producers, and may not always be experienced subjectively as a conflict. However, it highlights the moral dilemma involved in eating animals, a dilemma that all people resolve. 3 We will examine the psychological factors that support eating animals by focusing on characteristics of the eaters (people), the eaten (animals), and the eating (the act of consumption). We finish by discussing how psychological resolution of the meat paradox can inform our understanding of morality. An essay plan acts as the thesis, outlining the essay’s topics in the order in which they will appear. The Eaters 4 The surest way to eliminate moral tension associated with eating animals is to not eat them. Vegetarians experience no conflict between their beliefs about animal harm and their dietary practices. Studies of vegetarianism have revealed that moral concern regarding the raising and slaughter of animals is a principal motivation for eliminating meat consumption (Amato & Partridge, 1989; Ruby, 2012). In addition to motivating dietary change, valuing animal welfare helps sustain and moralize vegetarian diets (Rozin, Markwith, & Stoess, 1997). Vegetarians avoid the meat paradox through a behavioural choice driven by moral concern for animals. 5 Nevertheless, vegetarians seldom exceed 10 per cent of any national population—most people consume meat. The primary motivation omnivores report is that meat tastes good (Lea & Worsley, 2003). Its appetitive qualities likely reflect an evolved preference for foods high in fat, protein, and calories (Stanford, 1999). However, meat can also elicit disgust, arguably because it poses a higher risk of carrying dangerous pathogens than plant material (Fessler & Navarrete, 2003). This oral disgust can also be a moral disgust for some, providing an emotional base for their moral avoidance of meat (Rozin et al., 1997). People’s feelings toward meat are therefore ambivalent,and the balance of pleasure and disgust helps determine who eats meat and who rejects it (Rozin, 1996, 2004; Rozin et al., 1997). 6 Some meat eaters find their consumption less morally problematic than others. Two political ideologies underlying this individual difference are authoritarianism,the belief that it is acceptable to control and aggress against subordinates (Altemeyer, 1981), and social dominance orientation (SDO), the endorsement of social hierarchy and inequality (Sidanius & Pratto, 2001). Research has found that omnivores are higher in both factors than vegetarians and that omnivores who value inequality and hierarchy eat more red meat than those who do not (Allen & Baines, 2002; Allen, Wilson, Ng, & Dunne, 2000). The authors don’t define words they expect their audience to know; however, the meaning of “ambivalent” can be determined by context. Because the term “authoritarianism” is used in a specialized context in paragraph 6, the concept is defined. 7 People may also eat meat because it expresses their identity. At a personal level, meat consumption is tied to male identity, and its consumption makes some males feel like “real men” (Rothgerber, 2013). The association is so close that meat has become metaphorically “male” (Rozin, Hormes, Faith, & Wansink, 2012), such that meat eaters are perceived as more masculine than vegetarians (Ruby & Heine, 2011). Rejecting meat can also help express valued identities. A recent cross-cultural study of vegetarianism found that Indian vegetarians value their in-group and respect authority more than omnivorous Indians do (Ruby, Heine, Kamble, Cheng, & Waddar, 2013). This finding indicates that the decision to reject meat may be tied to a sense of belonging to a cultural group and endorsement of group values. A clear topic sentence linking meat and identity announces the paragraph’s main idea. It is developed through two related subpoints: male identity and “valued identities.” As in student essays, topic sentences in academic essays help create coherence. 8 In sum, the psychological characteristics of eaters may influence their appetite for eating animals. People for whom meat is a moral issue of animal welfare are inclined to eschew it; people who accept or endorse domination and inequality eat meat eagerly. Hedonic and identity-related motives also play important roles. A transition begins the last paragraph of this section. The Eaten 9 Understanding how people think about animals—the eaten—offers insights into the psychology of meat eating that complement those based on understanding the characteristics of eaters. In particular, an animal’s perceived mind and its perceived similarity to humans are key factors influencing people’s willingness to eat it. 10 Eating animals is morally troublesome when animals are perceived as worthy of moral concern. The more moral concern we afford an entity, the more immoral it becomes to harm it. People show considerable variability in the extent to which they deem animals worthy of moral concern (Bastian, Loughnan, Haslam, & Radke, 2012). This variability is partially determined by the extent to which animals are perceived to be capable of suffering. The idea that an animal’s pain sensitivity can determine its moral worthdates back to Jeremy Bentham (Bentham, 1789/1907), who argued that “the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” (“Limits Between Private Ethics and the Art of Legislation,” note 122). Psychologists have corroborated Bentham’s point by finding that the perceived capacity for subjective experience—including the capacity for pain—partially underlies the extent to which entities are deemed worthy of moral concern (Waytz, Gray, Epley, & Wegner, 2010). If perceived pain sensitivity partially underlies moral concern, reducing animals’ capacity to suffer might facilitate eating them. The authors use balanced phrasing (first sentence) and repetition for emphasis (e.g., “moral concern,” “moral worth,” “considerable variability,” and “this variability”). These strategies increase coherence and reader comprehension. 11 Several recent studies have found this to be the case. We (Bastian, Loughnan, et al., 2012) asked people to rate the extent to which each of 32 animals possessed a set of mental capacities and their willingness to eat each animal. We found a strong negative relationship between attributed mind and edibility. Eating a more “mindful” animal was also judged as more morally wrong and more subjectively unpleasant. These findings hold across diverse samples, with other research showing that American, Canadian, Hong Kong Chinese, and Indian consumers report less willingness to eat “mindful” animals and more disgust at the