How Can We Reduce Speciesism? A Psychological Approach to a Social Problem

This chapter addresses the overarching question of how we could reduce humanity’s speciesism and expand our moral circle to include nonhuman animals through using ‘the speciesism scale’. As one of the great moral challenges that humanity faces in the twenty-first century, nonhuman animals are heavily involved in institutions and organizations created and dominated by humans—often involuntarily and to their detriment. Speciesism distorts human thinking, perceptions, and research efforts while causing suffering and harm to countless sentient beings in the present and future alike. In this chapter, a compassionate methodology is used with a qualitative interventionist research design in order to examine whether certain interventions reduce test subjects’ speciesism. Eight test subjects in a management school undergo a series of interventions designed to reduce speciesism according to ‘the speciesism scale’ and findings are presented in regard to possible changes in the individual speciesism levels and dietary habits. The chapter contributes to the methodology of compassionate research, expanding its scope of application to nonhuman animals. The intervention, tested among management doctoral candidates, could also offer insights into practical interventions that can be employed by managers to reduce speciesism in organizations.