Animals and the Scope of Justice

Animals share our physical world, but the moral rules, values, and concerns about fairness that apply to those within our scope of justice rarely apply to animals. This paper reports an experiment that investigated the effect of three variables hypothesized to modify subjects' inclusion of animals in their scope of justice: (1) the animal's similarity to people, (2) the animal's utility to people, and (3) the severity of conflict between people and the animal. Three hundred and sixty‐three high school students read materials that led them to perceive an animal, the Bombardier beetle (Brachinus), as similar or dissimilar to people and as beneficial or harmful. Subjects then read a low‐conflict scenario and a high‐conflict scenario, each followed by dependent measures. The findings indicated that subjects' scope of justice was modified by the perceived utility of the animal and by conflict severity. Surprisingly, perceived similarity in the high‐conflict scenario decreased subjects' scope of justice. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for theory and for environmental conservation.