Children, Vegetariansim, and Ethics.

Saturday, August 26, 2006
Harvad Features and Releases
Jill Anderson

Read the full article: http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2006/08/08_hussar.html

She has found that for most of the children who became vegetarian, the decision typically had more to do with morals (e.g., empathy) than with personal choice (e.g., food preference or health). She explains: "This means that children are being influenced by other children and going against the tide in their own homes, which are meat-eating homes." Additionally, non-vegetarian children judged those who made a decision to refrain from eating meat for moral reasons more harshly than those who made personal decisions to be vegetarian.

In the study, all of the vegetarian children disclosed moral reasons for not eating meat, while the non-vegetarian children did not acknowledge morals at all. However, vegetarian children did not judge as being bad those who chose to eat meat. They were more critical of those who had once committed to not eating meat for moral reasons and then broke the commitment. Hussar plans to continue studying vegetarian children and moral decision-making while working on her dissertation this year.