Word embeddings reveal growing moral concern for people, animals and the environment.

The Enlightenment idea of historical moral progress asserts that civil societies become more moral over time. This is often understood as an expanding moral circle and is argued to be tightly linked with language use, with some suggesting that shifts in how we express concern for others can be considered an important indicator of moral progress. Our research explores these notions by examining historical trends in natural language use during the 19th and 20th centuries. We found that the associations between words denoting moral concern and words referring to people, animals, and the environment grew stronger over time. The findings support widely-held views about the nature of moral progress by showing that language has changed in a way that reflects greater concern for others.

Are we smart enough to remember how smart animals are?

Some theoretical perspectives suggest people overestimate animals' mental capacities (anthropomorphism), while others suggest the reverse (mind-denial). However, studies have generally not employed objective criteria against which the accuracy or appropriateness of people's judgments about animals can be tested. We employed memory paradigms, in which judgments are clearly right or wrong, in nine experiments (eight preregistered; n = 3,162). When tested shortly after exposure, meat-eaters' memory about companion animals (e.g., dogs) but not food animals (e.g., pigs) showed an anthropomorphic bias: they remembered more information consistent with animals having versus lacking a mind (Experiments 1-4). Vegetarians' and vegans' memory, on the other hand, consistently showed an anthropomorphic bias regarding food and companion animals alike (Experiments 5 and 6). When tested a week after exposure, both those who eat meat and those who do not showed signs of shifting toward a mind-denying bias (Experiments 2, 3, and 6). These biases had important consequences for beliefs about animal minds. Inducing mind-denying memory biases caused participants to see animals as possessing less sophisticated minds (Experiments 7-9). The work demonstrates that memories concerning animals' minds can depart predictably from reality and that such departures can contribute to biased evaluations of their mental capacities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Speciesism in everyday language.

Speciesism, like other forms of prejudice, is thought to be underpinned by biased patterns of language use. Thus far, however, psychological science has primarily focused on how speciesism is reflected in individuals' thoughts as opposed to wider collective systems of meaning such as language. We present a large-scale quantitative test of speciesism by applying machine-learning methods (word embeddings) to billions of English words derived from conversation, film, books, and the Internet. We found evidence of anthropocentric speciesism: words denoting concern (vs. indifference) and value (vs. valueless) were more closely associated with words denoting humans compared to many other animals. We also found evidence of companion animal speciesism: the same words were more closely associated with words denoting companion animals compared to most other animals. The work describes speciesism as a pervasive collective phenomenon that is evident in a naturally occurring expression of human psychology - everyday language.

Changing minds about minds: Evidence that people are too sceptical about animal sentience.

Our relationships with other animals are governed by how we view their capacity for sentience and suffering. However, there is currently little agreement as to whether people's beliefs about animal minds are largely accurate or inaccurate. We used an innovative task to examine how people update their beliefs in response to noisy but informative clues about animal minds. This allowed us to compare participants' posterior beliefs to what a normative participant ought to believe if they conform to Bayes' theorem. Five studies (four pre-registered; n = 2417) found that participants shifted their beliefs too far in response to clues that suggested animals do not have minds (i.e., overshooting what a normative participant ought to believe), but not far enough in response to clues that suggested animals have minds (i.e., falling short of what a normative participant ought to believe). A final study demonstrated that this effect was attenuated when humans were the targets of belief. The findings demonstrate that people underestimate animal minds in a way that can be said to be inaccurate and highlight the role of belief updating in downplaying evidence of animal minds. The findings are discussed in relation to speciesist beliefs about the supremacy of humans over animals.

Unpalatable truths: Commitment to eating meat is associated with strategic ignorance of food-animal minds.

Animal minds are of central importance to debates about their rights and welfare. Remaining ignorant of evidence that animals have minds is therefore likely to facilitate their mistreatment. Studying samples of adults and students from the UK and US we found that, consistent with motivational perspectives on meat consumption, those who were more (vs. less) committed to eating meat were more motivated to avoid exposure to information about food-animals' sentience (Studies 1), showed less interest in exposure to articles about intelligent food animals (Studies 2a and 2b), and were quicker to terminate exposure to internet pop-ups containing information about food-animals' minds (Studies 3a and 3b). At the same time, those who were more (vs. less) committed to eating meat approached information about companion-animals' minds (Studies 2a-3b) and unintelligent food animals (Studies 2a and 2b) in largely the same ways. The findings demonstrate that, within the UK and US, the desire to eat meat is associated with strategies to avoid information that is likely to challenge meat consumption.

When smiles (and frowns) speak words: Does power impact the correspondence between self-reported affect and facial expressions?

Self-reported experiences are often poor indicators of outward expressions. Here we examine social power as a variable that may impact the relationship between self-reported affect and facial expressions. Earlier studies addressing this issue were limited by focusing on a single facial expression (smiling) and by using different, less sensitive methods that yielded mostly null results. Sampling, for the first time, self-reported affect repeatedly in response to different negative, neutral and positive stimuli, and measuring concurrent facial muscle activation via electromyography, we found that high power (vs. baseline) increased the correspondence between self-reported positive affect and smiling. There was also an indication that high power (vs. baseline) bolstered the association between self-reported negative affect and frowning but the effect did not pass more stringent criteria for significance (p ≤ .005) and was therefore deemed inconclusive. The prediction that low power (vs. baseline) decreases the correspondence between self-reported affect and smiling and frowning facial expressions was not supported. Taken together, it would appear that (high) power can impact the relationship between self-reported affect and facial expressions, but it remains to be seen whether this effect extends beyond smiling facial expressions.

Can People Judge the Veracity of Their Intuitions?

People differ in the belief that their intuitions produce good decision outcomes. In the present research, we sought to test the validity of these beliefs by comparing individuals' self-reports with measures of actual intuition performance in a standard implicit learning task, exposing participants to seemingly random letter strings (Studies 1a-b) and social media profile pictures (Study 2) that conformed to an underlying rule or grammar. A meta-analysis synthesizing the present data (N = 400) and secondary data by Pretz, Totz, and Kaufman found that people's enduring beliefs in their intuitions were not reflective of actual performance in the implicit learning task. Meanwhile, task-specific confidence in intuition bore no sizable relation with implicit learning performance, but the observed data favoured neither the null hypothesis nor the alternative hypothesis. Together, the present findings suggest that people's ability to judge the veracity of their intuitions may be limited.