Literature Review

Synopsis Defining animals as property under our law deprives them, as sentient beings, of the capacity for cognizable interests that merit protection.

While anthropomorphizing nonhuman animals has been shown to increase identification with them and, by extension, concern for their wellbeing, little research has directly tested whether identifying with nonhuman animals is similarly associated with concern for their wellbeing. We tested hypotheses related to this premise across three cross-sectional studies. In study 1 (n = 224), we tested the hypothesis that therians—a group of people who self-identify with nonhuman animals, show greater concern for nonhuman animal rights than non-therian furries—people with a fan-like interest in media featuring anthropomorphized animal characters. In study 2 (n = 206), we further tested this hypothesis using implicit and explicit measures of identification with nonhuman animals to predict behavioral intentions to support nonhuman animal rights. In study 3 (n = 182), we tested the generalizability of our findings in a sample of undergraduate students. Taken together, the studies show that explicit, but not implicit, identification with nonhuman animals predicts greater support for their rights. The implications of these findings for research on anthropomorphism and animal rights activism are discussed, as well as the limitations of these findings and possible avenues for future research.

I believe that animals have intrinsic value, that is, value in their own right, notderived from the ways they serve human welfare. Indeed, I believe that living thingsin general have intrinsic value, as individual organisms and as systematicallyrelated in ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole. Those who hold at least somenonhuman organisms or systems of organisms to be intrinsically valuable generallyfall into one of three theoretical approaches: animal welfare, animal rights, andenvironmental ethics. These three perspectives differ in their criteria of intrinsicvalue. They therefore draw the lines of moral considerability—that is, the class ofentities that should serve as ends, or that for the sake of which we ought to act—indifferent places.