How animal identifiability affects children's food choices

How animal identifiability affects children's food choices Swati Mestri Scientific Editor Alexander Pol Deputy Editor Naming a chicken and describing its favorite habits is enough to make preschoolers choose poultry less often. This effect translates into verbal declarations and actual meal choices, but food preferences still most often win over empathy, according to a new paper by researchers from SWPS University. Reducing meat in your daily diet has benefits, as it is associated with lower health risks, enhanced environmental sustainability and reduced animal suffering. Previous research has shown that identifying individuals by name represents a cost-effective yet potent psychological intervention that elicits favorable attitudes toward both humans and animals. In human relations, the identification of individual victims, often referred to as the identifiable victim effect (IVE), increases willingness to help and promotes actual prosocial behavior, such as greater charitable donations. Learning an animal's name can also change attitudes toward it, but it has not yet been established whether this affects actual meat consumption and to what extent it applies to different animal species. Researchers from SWPS University decided to look for answers to these questions. They described the results in the paper "Naming the one to save the many: The effect of animal identifiability on children's reduced meat preference," published in the scientific journal Appetite. Is Lelek the chicken unique? Preschool children (5–6 years old) were invited to participate in the study. In the first experiment, the researchers wanted to replicate results obtained in 2024 showing that identifying animals and perceiving them as similar to humans makes children want to befriend the animals and express reluctance to eat their meat. The researchers also checked whether children would be willing to eat meat from other chickens and different animal species. During the experiment, children were presented with the silhouette of a chicken. In the identifiability group, the bird was given the name Lelek and a short description of its individual characteristics, including favorite foods and everyday habits in the yard. In the control group, children received the same information, but without a name and presented as a general description of the entire species. Then, the children were asked to build their own toy sandwiches using the provided items, including artificial slices of cheese and tomato, as well as poultry and pork cold cuts. In the second experiment, the children were divided into three groups. The first group learned about Chico the chicken as a unique individual (similarly to the first experiment); Chico the chicken was introduced to the second group as one of many similar representatives of its species, while the control group received general information about chickens. Children were asked, among other things, whether they perceived these animals as unique or similar to other chickens. From the name to the decision on the plate For children who did not like meat much, learning the chicken's individual history (its name, favorite food and everyday habits) made them less likely to say they were willing to eat this particular animal. When building their own toy sandwiches, they chose noticeably fewer slices of poultry cold cuts. This means that the way an animal's story is told plays an important role in shaping children's attitudes. Presenting the chicken as a unique individual with distinctive characteristics was more effective in limiting meat choices than emphasizing that it was the same as the other chickens in the coop. Building a relationship with such an individual allowed children to extend a caring attitude to other, previously anonymous birds of the same species. Children's empathy has its limits However, warm feelings toward a representative of one species do not extend to all animals. While the bond with a chicken decreased the participants' appetite for poultry, it did not affect their perception of pork. This may mean that the mechanism works within one species but does not translate into a general reluctance to eat meat. In addition, the effect of reduced willingness to eat meat occurred only in children who had little or moderate interest in eating meat from the beginning. For children who clearly liked to eat meat, learning the name and characteristics of the animal did not influence their eating decisions. "Save one to protect many" mechanism "A key finding of the experiment concerns the role of an animal's uniqueness. Presenting a chicken as an individual with its own name and truly distinctive traits was more effective at discouraging the choice of poultry meat than presenting a chicken that had a name but was otherwise similar to other chickens. "This implies that giving an animal a name helps a child view it as a being worthy of protection, provided that the name serves to distinguish the animal as unique. This sense of uniqueness encourages children to extend their concern to other, anonymous members of the same species," emphasizes one of the study authors, psychologist Aleksandra Rabinovitch, Ph.D., from the SWPS University Faculty of Psychology in Sopot. The results of the study open up new possibilities for shaping healthy habits in children. Using individualized animal characters, for instance, in preschool education, could help promote diets richer in plant-based foods. At the same time, the researchers emphasize that successfully changing children's diets requires taking their individual taste preferences and home habits into account. Publication details Aleksandra Rabinovitch et al., Naming the one to save the many: The effect of animal identifiability on children's reduced meat preference, Appetite (2027). DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2026.108738 Journal information: Appetite Provided by SWPS University