JUDGMENTS OF CRUELTY TOWARD ANIMALS - SEX-DIFFERENCES AND EFFECT OF AWARENESS OF SUFFERING

There is widespread agreement that cruelty toward animals is unaccepta ble (Hills 1994). Less clear is how people understand and make judgmen ts about cruelty. A question of theoretical and practical importance i s whether people judge the cruelty of what happens independently of th e cruelty of the person responsible. In this study, 501 male and femal e business students read a scenario depicting suffering caused to an a nimal. The person responsible was aware of and indifferent to causing suffering in one version of the scenario, but unaware and subsequently distressed in another version. The dependant variables were participa nt ratings of: (a) the cruelty of what happened; (b) the cruelty of th e person responsible; (c) how angry, and (d) how sad they felt on read ing the scenario. Sex of participant main effects occurred for all fou r variables. A main effect of awareness for cruelty of the person, but not for cruelty of what happened, supported the independence of the t wo cruelty judgments. However awareness by sex interactions on ail var iables except sadness complicated interpretation.