Lucius Caviola
Biographic Data
| ID | 1836911 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lucius Caviola |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lucius |
| FAMILY NAME | Caviola |
| SIGNATURE | CAVIOLA L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4302-5884 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 51 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Children Value Animals More Than Adults Do
Recent psychological research finds that U.S. American children have a weaker tendency than U.S. American adults to value humans more than animals. We aimed to conceptually replicate and extend this finding in a preregistered study ( N = 412). We investigated whether 6- to 9-year-old Polish children (Study 1a) are less likely to prioritize humans over animals than Polish adults are (Studies 1b and 1c). We presented participants with moral dilemma…
Becoming Speciesist
Children morally prioritize humans over animals less than adults do. Is this because children are less speciesist—meaning they place less moral weight on mere species membership? Or is it because they give less weight to differences in cognitive capacity between humans and other animals? We investigated this in two experiments, presenting children and adult participants in the United States and Spain with moral trade-off dilemmas. These dilemmas …
Signaling (in)tolerance
When development constricts our moral circle
Are the folk utilitarian about animals
Robert Nozick famously raised the possibility that there is a sense in which both deontology and utilitarianism are true: deontology applies to humans while utilitarianism applies to animals. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in such a hybrid views of ethics. Discussions of this Nozickian Hybrid View, and similar approaches to animal ethics, often assume that such an approach reflects the commonsense view, and best captures comm…
Investigating (sequential) unit asking
People exhibit scope insensitivity: Their expressed valuation of a problem is not proportionate with its scope or size. To address scope insensitivity in charitable giving, Hsee et al. (2013) developed the (Classical) Unit Asking technique, where people are first asked how much they are willing to donate to support a single individual, followed by how much they are willing to donate to support a group of individuals. In this paper, we explored th…
Humans first
Population ethical intuitions
Should you save the more useful? The effect of generality on moral judgments about rescue and indirect effects
Liking but Devaluing Animals
We explore whether priming emotion versus deliberation affects speciesism—the tendency to prioritize certain individuals over others on the basis of their species membership (three main and two supplementary studies, four preregistered; N = 3,288). We find that the tendency to prioritize humans over animals (anthropocentric speciesism) decreases when participants were asked to think emotionally compared to deliberatively. In contrast, the tendenc…
Quantifying the Valuation of Animal Welfare Among Americans
Speciesism, generalized prejudice, and perceptions of prejudiced others
Philosophers have argued there is a normative relationship between our attitudes towards animals ("speciesism") and other prejudices, and psychological work suggests speciesism relies on similar psychological processes and motivations as those underlying other prejudices. But do laypeople perceive such a connection? We compared perceptions of a target who is high or low on speciesism with those of a target who is high or low on racism (Studies 1-…
The moral standing of animals
We introduce and investigate the philosophical concept of 'speciesism' -the assignment of different moral worth based on species membership -as a psychological construct. In five studies, using both general population samples online and student samples, we show that speciesism is a measurable, stable construct with high interpersonal differences, that goes along with a cluster of other forms of prejudice, and is able to predict real-world decisio…
Beyond sacrificial harm
(see record 2018-15704-001). The copyright attribution was incorrectly listed, and the Creative Commons CC-BY license disclaimer was incorrectly omitted from the author note. The correct copyright is "© 2017 The Author(s)" and the omitted disclaimer is found in the erratum. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Recent research has relied on trolley-type sacrificial moral dilemmas to study utilitarian versus nonutilitarian modes of mo…
Zika, contraception and the non‐identity problem
The 2016 outbreak of the Zika arbovirus was associated with large numbers of cases of the newly‐recognised Congenital Zika Syndrome ( CZS ). This novel teratogenic epidemic raises significant ethical and practical issues. Many of these arise from strategies used to avoid cases of CZS , with contraception in particular being one proposed strategy that is atypical in epidemic control. Using contraception to reduce the burden of CZS has an ethical c…
Doing good by doing nothing? The role of social norms in explaining default effects in altruistic contexts
We explore whether the known preference for default options in choice contexts—default effects—occur in altruistic contexts and the extent to which this can be explained through appeal to social norms. In four experiments, we found that (i) participants were more likely to donate money to charity when this was the default option in an altruistic choice context; (ii) participants perceived the default option to be the socially normative option; (i…
The moral standing of animals
We introduce and investigate the philosophical concept of 'speciesism' -the assignment of different moral worth based on species membership -as a psychological construct. In five studies, using both general population samples online and student samples, we show that speciesism is a measurable, stable construct with high interpersonal differences, that goes along with a cluster of other forms of prejudice, and is able to predict real-world decisio…
Speciesism, generalized prejudice, and perceptions of prejudiced others
Philosophers have argued there is a normative relationship between our attitudes towards animals ("speciesism") and other prejudices, and psychological work suggests speciesism relies on similar psychological processes and motivations as those underlying other prejudices. But do laypeople perceive such a connection? We compared perceptions of a target who is high or low on speciesism with those of a target who is high or low on racism (Studies 1-…
Doing good by doing nothing? The role of social norms in explaining default effects in altruistic contexts
We explore whether the known preference for default options in choice contexts—default effects—occur in altruistic contexts and the extent to which this can be explained through appeal to social norms. In four experiments, we found that (i) participants were more likely to donate money to charity when this was the default option in an altruistic choice context; (ii) participants perceived the default option to be the socially normative option; (i…
Doing good by doing nothing? The role of social norms in explaining default effects in altruistic contexts
We explore whether the known preference for default options in choice contexts—default effects—occur in altruistic contexts and the extent to which this can be explained through appeal to social norms. In four experiments, we found that (i) participants were more likely to donate money to charity when this was the default option in an altruistic choice context; (ii) participants perceived the default option to be the socially normative option; (i…
Zika, contraception and the non‐identity problem
The 2016 outbreak of the Zika arbovirus was associated with large numbers of cases of the newly‐recognised Congenital Zika Syndrome ( CZS ). This novel teratogenic epidemic raises significant ethical and practical issues. Many of these arise from strategies used to avoid cases of CZS , with contraception in particular being one proposed strategy that is atypical in epidemic control. Using contraception to reduce the burden of CZS has an ethical c…
Beyond sacrificial harm
(see record 2018-15704-001). The copyright attribution was incorrectly listed, and the Creative Commons CC-BY license disclaimer was incorrectly omitted from the author note. The correct copyright is "© 2017 The Author(s)" and the omitted disclaimer is found in the erratum. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Recent research has relied on trolley-type sacrificial moral dilemmas to study utilitarian versus nonutilitarian modes of mo…
Speciesism, generalized prejudice, and perceptions of prejudiced others
Philosophers have argued there is a normative relationship between our attitudes towards animals ("speciesism") and other prejudices, and psychological work suggests speciesism relies on similar psychological processes and motivations as those underlying other prejudices. But do laypeople perceive such a connection? We compared perceptions of a target who is high or low on speciesism with those of a target who is high or low on racism (Studies 1-…
The moral standing of animals
We introduce and investigate the philosophical concept of 'speciesism' -the assignment of different moral worth based on species membership -as a psychological construct. In five studies, using both general population samples online and student samples, we show that speciesism is a measurable, stable construct with high interpersonal differences, that goes along with a cluster of other forms of prejudice, and is able to predict real-world decisio…
Liking but Devaluing Animals
We explore whether priming emotion versus deliberation affects speciesism—the tendency to prioritize certain individuals over others on the basis of their species membership (three main and two supplementary studies, four preregistered; N = 3,288). We find that the tendency to prioritize humans over animals (anthropocentric speciesism) decreases when participants were asked to think emotionally compared to deliberatively. In contrast, the tendenc…
Quantifying the Valuation of Animal Welfare Among Americans
Should you save the more useful? The effect of generality on moral judgments about rescue and indirect effects
Humans first
Population ethical intuitions
Are the folk utilitarian about animals
Robert Nozick famously raised the possibility that there is a sense in which both deontology and utilitarianism are true: deontology applies to humans while utilitarianism applies to animals. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in such a hybrid views of ethics. Discussions of this Nozickian Hybrid View, and similar approaches to animal ethics, often assume that such an approach reflects the commonsense view, and best captures comm…
Investigating (sequential) unit asking
People exhibit scope insensitivity: Their expressed valuation of a problem is not proportionate with its scope or size. To address scope insensitivity in charitable giving, Hsee et al. (2013) developed the (Classical) Unit Asking technique, where people are first asked how much they are willing to donate to support a single individual, followed by how much they are willing to donate to support a group of individuals. In this paper, we explored th…
Children Value Animals More Than Adults Do
Recent psychological research finds that U.S. American children have a weaker tendency than U.S. American adults to value humans more than animals. We aimed to conceptually replicate and extend this finding in a preregistered study ( N = 412). We investigated whether 6- to 9-year-old Polish children (Study 1a) are less likely to prioritize humans over animals than Polish adults are (Studies 1b and 1c). We presented participants with moral dilemma…
Becoming Speciesist
Children morally prioritize humans over animals less than adults do. Is this because children are less speciesist—meaning they place less moral weight on mere species membership? Or is it because they give less weight to differences in cognitive capacity between humans and other animals? We investigated this in two experiments, presenting children and adult participants in the United States and Spain with moral trade-off dilemmas. These dilemmas …
Signaling (in)tolerance
When development constricts our moral circle
Psychology (14 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (12 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Economics (5 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (3 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (3 works) · Ethics in Business and Education (3 works)