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Literary Fiction Influences Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare

Literary fiction has been credited with considerable power to improve attitudes toward outgroups. It was even argued that it has been an important factor behind the global decline of violence against various minorities in the last centuries. Could it also help to reduce the human-inflicted suffering...

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Autores principales: Małecki, Wojciech, Pawłowski, Bogusław, Sorokowski, Piotr
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5179074/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28006033
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168695
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author Małecki, Wojciech
Pawłowski, Bogusław
Sorokowski, Piotr
author_facet Małecki, Wojciech
Pawłowski, Bogusław
Sorokowski, Piotr
author_sort Małecki, Wojciech
collection PubMed
description Literary fiction has been credited with considerable power to improve attitudes toward outgroups. It was even argued that it has been an important factor behind the global decline of violence against various minorities in the last centuries. Could it also help to reduce the human-inflicted suffering of animals? To test this, we studied the attitude toward animal welfare of n = 921 (experimental group) people of both sexes who read a short fragment of an unpublished novel with a motif of the physical abuse of an animal. The control group (n = 912) read a fragment of a similar length but not related to animals. After reading the text all subjects filled out an on-line questionnaire with seven items (camouflaged among many others items) measuring attitudes toward animal welfare. The questionnaire included also demographical questions, such as whether the subject keeps pets. We found that in comparison with the control group, the experimental group was significantly more concerned about animal welfare. This result indicates that literary fiction can influence attitudes toward other species. It is also worth noting that our study is characterized by a high level of ecological validity, i.e. a relatively high extent to which its results can be generalized (or extended) to real-world settings. Due to its specific design, which involved the cooperation of a bestselling author and his publisher, the study approximated the typical conditions in which people read fiction in a remarkably accurate way. Finally, our research has potential practical implications for promoting animal welfare.
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spelling pubmed-51790742017-01-04 Literary Fiction Influences Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare Małecki, Wojciech Pawłowski, Bogusław Sorokowski, Piotr PLoS One Research Article Literary fiction has been credited with considerable power to improve attitudes toward outgroups. It was even argued that it has been an important factor behind the global decline of violence against various minorities in the last centuries. Could it also help to reduce the human-inflicted suffering of animals? To test this, we studied the attitude toward animal welfare of n = 921 (experimental group) people of both sexes who read a short fragment of an unpublished novel with a motif of the physical abuse of an animal. The control group (n = 912) read a fragment of a similar length but not related to animals. After reading the text all subjects filled out an on-line questionnaire with seven items (camouflaged among many others items) measuring attitudes toward animal welfare. The questionnaire included also demographical questions, such as whether the subject keeps pets. We found that in comparison with the control group, the experimental group was significantly more concerned about animal welfare. This result indicates that literary fiction can influence attitudes toward other species. It is also worth noting that our study is characterized by a high level of ecological validity, i.e. a relatively high extent to which its results can be generalized (or extended) to real-world settings. Due to its specific design, which involved the cooperation of a bestselling author and his publisher, the study approximated the typical conditions in which people read fiction in a remarkably accurate way. Finally, our research has potential practical implications for promoting animal welfare. Public Library of Science 2016-12-22 /pmc/articles/PMC5179074/ /pubmed/28006033 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168695 Text en © 2016 Małecki et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Małecki, Wojciech
Pawłowski, Bogusław
Sorokowski, Piotr
Literary Fiction Influences Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare
title Literary Fiction Influences Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare
title_full Literary Fiction Influences Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare
title_fullStr Literary Fiction Influences Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare
title_full_unstemmed Literary Fiction Influences Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare
title_short Literary Fiction Influences Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare
title_sort literary fiction influences attitudes toward animal welfare
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5179074/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28006033
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168695
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