Abstract
Women tend to be more concerned about the welfare of (human/nonhuman) animals and the natural environment than men. A growing literature has shown that gender differences in environmental exploitation can be explained partially by the fact that women and men differ in their social dominance and empathic orientations. We extend past studies by examining whether social dominance orientation (SDO; ‘Superior groups should dominate inferior groups’) and empathy (‘I feel others’ emotions’) also help explain gender differences in attitudes towards nonhuman animals. Our mediation model confirmed that SDO and empathy partially and independently mediate gender differences in human supremacy beliefs (‘Animals are inferior to humans’) and/or speciesism (‘I think it is perfectly acceptable for cattle, chickens and pigs to be raised for human consumption’) among 1002 individuals (57% female; Mage = 26.44) from the general population in Portugal. These findings provide evidence that traits referring to human–human relations can help explain gender differences in human–animal relations. The cumulative evidence suggests that exploitative tendencies towards the natural environment and (human/nonhuman) animals may be built upon shared psychological mechanisms.
Highlights
There is ample empirical evidence on gender differences in human–environment and human–(nonhuman)animal relations
Adding to a growing literature investigating how individual differences in orientations towards others are linked to non-human targets, we examined whether social dominance orientation (SDO) and empathy may explain why men and women differ in two constructs related to human–animal relations
The results showed reliable mediational pathways of gender differences in speciesism via both SDO (B = 0.04, p < 0.05, 95% CI [0.01, 0.08]) and empathy (B = 0.04, p < 0.01, 95% CI [0.02, 0.07])
Summary
There is ample empirical evidence on gender differences in human–environment and human–(nonhuman)animal relations. Milfont and Sibley (2016) used one-year longitudinal data to show that both social dominance orientation and empathy partially accounted for gender differences in environmental protection. These findings indicate that individual differences in orientations towards human– human relations can help explain why men and women differ in their relations with the natural environment. No empirical studies have yet directly addressed this question To address this gap, the present study draws on recent findings that women display greater levels of environmentalism partially because of their higher levels of empathy and lower levels of SDO compared to men (Milfont & Sibley, 2016). SDO has been consistently linked to human-based hierarchical views towards the natural environment (Milfont et al, 2013, in press; Milfont & Sibley, 2014), as well as support for the exploitation of animals in favour of human interests and human supremacy beliefs (e.g., Dhont et al, 2014, 2016)
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