To Splat or Not to Splat?

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the correlation between people’s behavior towards animals and their anthropocentric and anthropomorphic beliefs. We measured participants’ reactions to unexpected encounters with everyday animals that could be considered “unwelcome,” “vermin” or “intruders” in a space. We asked participants how they would react to encounters that varied in terms of indoor or outdoor spaces, high or low cognitive load tasks, and whether the encounter was active or passive. Participants completed a similarity task and a property attribution task to measure their perception of different organisms and the traits they may share with humans. Participants were first-year students at Eckerd College enrolled in a course focusing on “pests.” The students completed the survey before and after the course. Paired sample t-tests were used to determine whether course material influenced the frequency of various response behaviors. Using a regression-analysis to address our primary research question about whether anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism affect people’s behaviors when encountering various organisms. We expect to find a decrease in anthropocentrism and an increase in anthropomorphism after the course. More generally, we expect there to be a positive relationship between anthropocentric belief and aggressive behavior towards organisms. We also expect a negative relationship between anthropomorphism and aggressive behavior towards those organisms, as we believe that attributing human qualities towards the animals may increase participants’ positive feelings towards them. The results of this study have implications for how people engage with conservation initiatives and how education can affect people’s attitudes towards various organisms. 

If you are having trouble reading the poster, please feel free to use this link to view it instead: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cNmpd5HzyoXBP0q-PrCPIiP2mp5miPTT/view?usp=sharing 

For more information:  lgbarrentine@eckerd.edu | zrlondon@eckerd.edu | arkiss@eckerd.edu | leffersjs@eckerd.edu