Pourquoi de jeunes enfants deviennent Vegs

[Animal 0]

Why Do Young Children Choose to Become Vegetarians?
by Jill Anderson
August 8, 2006

Doctoral Student Karen Hussar with Alejandra TumbleAlejandra Tumble, 10, doesn’t eat meat and really doesn’t like ham. But, her reasons for not
eating meat might surprise you. Alejandra talks at length about her
choice not to eat meat, and how strange it seems to her that a pig can
be processed into a thin slice of pink meat. She thinks it’s wrong—not
for everyone, but at least for her.

HGSE Doctoral Student Karen Hussar’s research examines children aged
6–10 who have become vegetarians. As with Alejandra, for most children
Hussar studied, the decision has more to do with morals than with
personal choice. This is contrary to the theories of famed psychologists
Lawrence Kohlberg and Jean Piaget—both pioneers in moral
development—that children aren’t capable of making independent moral
decisions at this age.

“It’s exciting to see how relatively autonomous and independently-minded
these children are,” says Thomas Professor Paul Harris, who advised
Hussar throughout the research. “This means that children are being
influenced by other children and going against the tide in their own
homes, which are meat-eating homes. We don’t know much about how
children make moral decisions at such a young age. I think this is a
good pioneering effort.”

Hussar, who began her study on vegetarians on the recommendation of
Harris, says that vegetarian children are the perfect subjects for
research about moral development.

“When you talk to kids about bullying or teasing, they all know the
right answers and can say it’s wrong,” Hussar says. “However, the nice
thing about this population [vegetarian] of children is they don’t have
the prescribed answers in their heads. So, you feel you’re getting real
responses about morality.”

Hussar’s research looked at a total of 45 children—some vegetarians from
meat-eating homes, some vegetarians from vegetarian homes, and some
nonvegetarians—and inquired about their decisions to eat or not to eat
meat through role play. In order to gauge how these children made their
decisions, Hussar set up methods of questioning that provided four
different stories for the children including moral, personal,
meat-eating, and social. Then, Hussar compared the responses to
determine how their judgments differed. Through these interviews, she
discovered that many children made the choice based on moral reasons.
“Their responses were more about how animals are their friends,” Hussar explains. “They could’ve used personal reasons like, ‘I feel healthier,’ or taste reasons like, ‘Bad for my taste buds—it’s really chewy.’”
In one of Hussar’s first studies, the vegetarians came from meat-eating
homes and had made this decision entirely separate from their families.
The research revealed that [nonvegetarian] children judged those who
made a decision to refrain from eating meat for moral reasons more
harshly than those who made personal decisions.

Even more interesting for Hussar was the discovery that all of the
vegetarian children disclosed moral reasons to not eat meat, such as “I
don’t like the idea of killing animals,” or “I love animals and I didn’t
want to eat them…I just wanted to be nice.” The nonvegetarian children
[in the study] didn’t acknowledge morals at all.

More surprising was that the vegetarian children didn’t judge those who
chose to eat meat as being bad. “For those that come from families where
they’re the only non-meat eater it may be hard for them to be judgmental
of the people they live with because they’re their role models,” Hussar
says. In fact, the vegetarian children looked more harshly upon those
children who had once committed to not eating meat for moral reasons and
then broke that commitment.

Hussar admits that everything isn’t so cut and dry. Many nonvegetarian
children can recognize the moral value of not eating meat, yet do not
make the choice to become vegetarian. She’s eager to do more research to
find out why certain children stop eating meat while others do not.
“[Non-vegetarians] don’t look and think this [choice] is so unusual,”
Hussar says. “I think [their choice to continue eating meat] has to do
in part with majority. I don’t think it’s a case of they don’t recognize
moral value, but it isn’t enough to turn them into vegetarians.”

As Hussar works on completing her dissertation this year, she plans to
continue researching vegetarian children and moral decisions. In the
upcoming year, she will work with Harris in studying children who become
vegetarians through the influence of their friends, as well as the moral
choices that lead to vegetarianism.

2006 President and Fellows of Harvard College.

[animo-aequoanimo 0]

C'est un excellent sujet. On pourrrait peut-être mentionner cette étude dans le prochain bulletin Hiver ?

[Animal 0]

Certainement Cé !

[animo-aequoanimo 0]

Ok ! Je vais le déplacer dans Bulletin.