Judgments of Cruelty Toward Animals: Sex Differences and Effect of Awareness of Suffering

ABSTRACTThere is widespread agreement that cruelty toward animals is unacceptable (Hills 1994). Less clear is how people understand and make judgments about cruelty. A question of theoretical and practical importance is whether people judge the cruelty of what happens independently of the cruelty of the person responsible. In this study, 501 male and female business students read a scenario depicting suffering caused to an animal. The person responsible was aware of and indifferent to causing suffering in one version of the scenario, but unaware and subsequently distressed in another version. The dependant variables were participant ratings of: (a) the cruelty of what happened; (b) the cruelty of the person responsible; (c) how angry, and (d) how sad they felt on reading the scenario. Sex of participant main effects occurred for all four variables. A main effect of awareness for cruelty of the person, but not for cruelty of what happened, supported the independence of the two cruelty judgments. However, a...