Memes about animal resistance: Here's why you shouldn't laugh off rebellious orcas and sea otters too quickly

by Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond, The Conversation

Memes position the otter as a renegade revolutionary, modeled on Ché Guevara. Credit: thesurfingotter via Instagram

Memes galore centered on the "orca revolution" have inundated the online realm. They gleefully depict orcas launching attacks on boats in the Strait of Gibraltar and off the Shetland coast.

One particularly ingenious image showcases an orca posed as a sickle crossed with a hammer. The cheeky caption reads, "Eat the rich," a nod to the orcas' penchant for sinking lavish yachts.

A surfboard-snatching sea otter in Santa Cruz, California has also claimed the media spotlight. Headlines dub her an "adorable outlaw" "at large."

Memes conjure her in a beret like the one donned by socialist revolutionary Ché Guevara. In one caption, she proclaims, "Accept our existence or expect resistance … an otter world is possible."

My scholarship centers on animal-human relations through the prism of social justice. As I see it, public glee about wrecked surfboards and yachts hints at a certain flavor of schadenfreude. At a time marked by drastic socioeconomic disparities, white supremacy and environmental degradation, casting these marine mammals as revolutionaries seems like a projection of desires for social justice and habitable ecosystems.

A glimpse into the work of some political scientists, philosophers and animal behavior researchers injects weightiness into this jocular public dialog. The field of critical animal studies analyzes structures of oppression and power and considers pathways to dismantling them. These scholars' insights challenge the prevailing view of nonhuman animals as passive victims. They also oppose the widespread assumption that nonhuman animals can't be political actors.

So while meme lovers project emotions and perspectives onto these particular wild animals, scholars of critical animal studies suggest that nonhuman animals do in fact engage in resistance.

Nonhuman animal protest is everywhere

Are nonhuman animals in a constant state of defiance? I'd answer, undoubtedly, that the answer is yes.

The entire architecture of animal agriculture attests to animals' unyielding resistance against confinement and death. Cages, corrals, pens and tanks would not exist were it not for animals' tireless revolt.

Even when hung upside down on conveyor hangars, chickens furiously flap their wings and bite, scratch, peck and defecate on line workers at every stage of the process leading to their deaths.

Until the end, hooked tuna resist, gasping and writhing fiercely on ships' decks. Hooks, nets and snares would not be necessary if fish allowed themselves to be passively harvested.

If they consented to repeated impregnation, female pigs and cows wouldn't need to be tethered to "rape racks" to prevent them from struggling to get away.

If they didn't mind having their infants permanently taken from their sides, dairy cows wouldn't need to be blinded with hoods so they don't bite and kick as the calves are removed; they wouldn't bellow for weeks after each instance. I contend that failure to recognize their bellowing as protest reflects "anthropodenial"—what ethologist Frans de Waal calls the rejection of obvious continuities between human and nonhuman animal behavior, cognition and emotion.

The prevalent view of nonhuman animals remains that of René Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who viewed animals' actions as purely mechanical, like those of a machine. From this viewpoint, one might dismiss these nonhuman animals' will to prevail as unintentional or merely instinctual. But political scientist Dinesh Wadiwel argues that "even if their defiance is futile, the will to prefer life over death is a primary act of resistance, perhaps the only act of dissent available to animals who are subject to extreme forms of control."

Otter 841 is the wild sea otter off Santa Cruz, California, who some observers suspect has had it with surfers in her turf.

Creaturely escape artists

Despite humans' colossal efforts to repress them, nonhuman animals still manage to escape from slaughterhouses. They also break out of zoos, circuses, aquatic parks, stables and biomedical laboratories. Tilikum, a captive orca at Sea World, famously killed his trainer—an act at least one marine mammal behaviorist characterized as intentional.

Philosopher Fahim Amir suggests that depression among captive animals is likewise a form of emotional rebellion against unbearable conditions, a revolt of the nerves. Dolphins engage in self-harm like thrashing against the tank's walls or cease to eat and retain their breath until death. Sows whose body-sized cages impede them from turning around to make contact with their piglets repeatedly ram themselves into the metal struts, sometimes succumbing to their injuries.

Critical animal studies scholars contend that all these actions arguably demonstrate nonhuman animals' yearning for freedom and their aversion to inequity.

As for the marine stars of summer 2023's memes, fishing gear can entangle and harm orcas. Sea otters were hunted nearly to extinction for their fur. Marine habitats have been degraded by human activities including overfishing, oil spills, plastic, chemical and sonic pollution, and climate change. It's easy to imagine they might be responding to human actions, including bodily harm and interference with their turf.

What is solidarity with nonhuman animals?

Sharing memes that cheer on wild animals is one thing. But there are more substantive ways to demonstrate solidarity with animals.

Legal scholars support nonhuman animals' resistance by proposing that their current classification as property should be replaced with that of personhood or beingness.

Nonhuman animals including songbirds, dolphins, elephants, horses, chimpanzees and bears increasingly appear as plaintiffs alleging their subjection to extinction, abuse and other injustices.

Citizenship for nonhuman animals is another pathway to social and political inclusion. It would guarantee the right to appeal arbitrary restrictions of domesticated nonhuman animals' autonomy. It would also mandate legal duties to protect them from harm.

Everyday deeds can likewise convey solidarity.

Boycotting industries that oppress nonhuman animals by becoming vegan is a powerful action. It is a form of political "counter-conduct," a term philosopher Michel Foucault uses to describe practices that oppose dominant norms of power and control.

Creating roadside memorials for nonhuman animals killed by motor vehicles encourages people to see them as beings whose lives and deaths matter, rather than mere "roadkill."

Political scientists recognize that human and nonhuman animals' struggles against oppression are intertwined. At different moments, the same strategies leveraged against nonhuman animals have cast segments of the human species as "less than human" in order to exploit them.

The category of the human is ever-shifting and ominously exclusive. I argue that no one is safe as long as there is a classification of "animality." It confers susceptibility to extravagant forms of violence, legally and ethically condoned.

Might an 'otter world' be possible?

I believe quips about the marine mammal rebellion reflect awareness that our human interests are entwined with those of nonhuman animals. The desire to achieve sustainable relationships with other species and the natural world feels palpable to me within the memes and media coverage. And it's happening as human-caused activity makes our shared habitats increasingly unlivable.

Solidarity with nonhuman animals is consistent with democratic principles—for instance, defending the right to well-being and opposing the use of force against innocent subjects. Philosopher Amir recommends extending the idea that there can be no freedom as long as there is still unfreedom beyond the species divide: "While we may not yet fully be able to picture what this may mean, there is no reason we should not begin to imagine it."

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Study reveals the animals we see as 'friends,' 'food' and those 'worth fighting for'

 

How Ukraine's savvy official social media rallied the world and raised the bar for national propaganda

by Brandon Boatwright, The Conversation

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Just days after the Russian military launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, stories of Ukrainian resistance were already circulating with a ferocity all their own.

Part of this was due to the Ukrainian government's savvy use of social media.

On March 7, 2022, for example, the government posted a video on Twitter, the platform now known as X, showing clips of Ukrainian farmers using John Deere tractors to tow away disabled Russian tanks and equipment. The image came with a simple message, complemented by a tractor icon: "Don't mess with Ukrainian farmers."

This video caught my attention—and that of my colleague Andrew Pyle, who, like me, studies the strategic use of communication.

We decided to study all of the posts that the Ukrainian government and the city of Kyiv posted to their official Twitter accounts during the first days of the Russian invasion. We found that the governments strategically used the platform as a form of crisis communication and public diplomacy.

While Ukraine was battling the Russian army on its land, it was also fighting for the hearts and minds of people following the conflict on social media from afar.

The process

We analyzed 163 tweets posted by the verified @Ukraine government and @Kyiv government accounts from Feb. 1, 2022, until May 1, 2022. We found many examples of Ukraine and Kyiv using the theme of resilience to boost their own image on the platform. Both of the accounts posted almost exclusively about the war during this period, with posts ranging from fundraising campaigns to appeals for users to "tag @Russia and tell them what you think about them."

Kyiv's account, which has 2.1 million followers and describes itself as "the city of courage" on its page, posted an image on March 9, 2022, that depicted a woman breastfeeding an infant against the backdrop of a map of the city's subway system. The imagery here closely resembles Catholic iconography of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus.

Ukraine's account has 2.3 million followers and the playful description, "Yes, this is the official twitter account of Ukraine." It posted a similarly religious-themed post about the war on Christmas Eve in 2022.

Digital public diplomacy

Other tweets over the past two years seem directed at strengthening relationships with the United States and other countries that have helped Ukraine defend itself against Russia.

One tweet from Ukraine's official account in 2022 thanked the U.S. for its support by wishing its "American friends" a happy Fourth of July. It posted another similar message directed at Americans in 2023, presenting Ukraine as a freedom-and-independence-loving country.

In this way, Ukraine's social media approach closely reflects what some scholars have called "selfie diplomacy"—or how a country uses social media to "draw its own self-portrait."

While scholars have begun to examine the role of social media for public diplomacy, relatively little is known about how countries can use X and other social media platforms to influence how people see them during a time of conflict.

But the broader use of technology to manipulate public opinion about war is far from new.

A strong historical precedent

The Woodrow Wilson administration, for example, enlisted the theorist Edwards Bernays, who is often referred to as the "father of public relations," to help its war effort during the 1910s.

Bernays worked with the newly authorized Committee on Public Information, a government agency tasked with building public support for World War I at home. Experts have also noted that this committee was essentially a government propaganda office, which at times engaged in disinformation.

Within months, Bernays and the committee helped shift public support for a war Americans had initially been reluctant to join by promoting the idea that the U.S. was involved in the fighting to bring democracy to Europe.

In particular, Bernays directed the CPI's Latin News Service in order to build support for the war among Latin American allies. He enlisted American companies doing business overseas to distribute literature about America's reasons for entering the war.

Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, knew that the use of symbols and images could sell the idea of war to the public. As Bernays wrote in 1942, "Arms and armaments are not the only weapons … ideas are weapons too."

These same principles apply in the case of the Ukraine war today.

Connecting with people

Ukraine has been trying to join NATO ever since the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Throughout the conflict, Ukraine has made numerous appeals on X to its allies in Europe and North America to accept its application to join the alliance.

It has also relied heavily on interactions with Western social media and culture to connect with people in foreign countries in creative ways.

For instance on Feb. 25, 2022, the Twitter account for the widely popular American television series "The Simpsons" posted an image of the namesake family stoically holding Ukrainian flags. A few hours later, Ukraine replied to the tweet with blue and yellow heart emojis along with a GIF from a "Simpsons" episode.

While our study does not contain data beyond May 2022, Ukraine and Kyiv's X accounts have continued to publish content that reflects these general themes of national resilience and diplomacy.

As the war in Ukraine continues, the government's strategic use of social media could serve as a model, or at least a point of consideration, to other countries also trying to advance their public images—especially during war and other times of hardship.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Musk activates Starlink internet service in Ukraine

What harm could one coal mine do? 1.7 million Hiroshima bombs of heat for starters, says physicist

by Simon Campbell, The Conversation

It might not sound like a lot of extra warming –but on a planetary scale, it’s huge. 

Credit: Shutterstock

This year, the Australian government rejected Clive Palmer's coal mine proposal—but approved three others. Over 100 more fossil fuel projects are in the decision pipeline.

Why are we still approving coal projects when climate impacts are intensifying? There is, as the International Energy Agency has pointed out, no place for new fossil fuels if we have a chance of holding global heating to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels. Our existing fossil fuel infrastructure is enough to blow our remaining carbon budget.

Unusually, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and her department were required to account for climate impacts in a recent decision.

They decided the climate effects did not have "relevant impact." One of the key reasons they gave for this was that the emissions from burning the coal from a single mine will, they claim, have a "very small" impact on warming—just 0.00024℃ over the lifetime of the mine.

As a physicist, this argument does not stack up. What seems like a minuscule amount of warming to a politician is, to scientists, very concerning. It's no wonder environmental organizations are filing lawsuits to try to stop these mines.

One new mine is the same as millions of nuclear bombs of heat

Right now, Plibersek and her department are weighing up final approval for the expansion of the Mount Pleasant coal mine in New South Wales' Hunter Valley. If approved, it would let the mine's owners MACH Energy Australia double its extraction rate to 21 million tons of coal per year.

So far, the project has breezed through environmental approvals. But how can Australia's environment minister reason that new coal mines won't do too much damage to the climate?

Plibersek gives two main arguments. One is the assumption that if we don't dig up fossil fuels, someone else will. Known as "the drug dealer's defense," this rationale has been rejected in a growing number of fossil fuel court cases, for example in in NSW, Queensland and the United States.

The second—the "very small" impact on warming—is worth a closer look.

By the mining company's calculation, the expanded project will add 535 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) to our atmosphere over the lifetime of the mine. That's about a year's worth of Australia's entire domestic emissions.

The department took this CO₂e figure and estimated how much this would change Earth's global temperature. That's where they got the "very small" figure of 0.00024℃.

To a politician, this small number may seem insignificant. But to a physicist it is truly remarkable. What it actually means is we are able to alter an entire planet's temperature with this single mine extension.

Changing a planet's temperature takes an enormous amount of energy.

This NASA visualisation shows carbon dioxide being added to Earth’s atmosphere over the course of the year 2021, split into four major contributors: fossil fuels in orange, burning biomass in red, land ecosystems in green, and the ocean in blue. The dots on the surface also show how atmospheric carbon dioxide is also being absorbed by land ecosystems in green and the ocean in blue.

If it weren't for the greenhouse effect, Earth would be too cold for life. The problem is humans have been steadily increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, causing Earth to retain more and more of the sun's vast energy, heating the planet to dangerous levels.

Burning fossil fuels is responsible for most of this.

Our planet is now warming at a rate of 0.018℃ per year.

If we compare that to the department's figure of 0.00024℃, we see the total warming effect from the Mount Pleasant mine would be about 1.3% of one year's global warming.

Doesn't sound like much? Consider this. Human activity is causing about 7.8 zettajoules of extra heat to be added to the Earth's climate system every year. So, 1.3% of a year's global warming gives roughly 0.1 zettajoules worth of extra heat through burning the output of an expanded Mount Pleasant coal mine.

Now, a zettajoule is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy. This number is so large we can't relate to it. We can think of it instead as around 1.7 million Hiroshima bombs worth of extra heat. From one single mine extension.

So, it is not a "very small" amount of energy. And that's just one mine. If the 25 proposed new coal mines and three recently approved projects go ahead, they would add 12,600 million tons of CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere. That, in turn, would trap heat equivalent to roughly 43 million Hiroshima bombs. And this doesn't even count the planned gas and oil projects, or projects approved at the state level.

We can't claim we don't know

New fossil fuel project approvals at a time when global heating is accelerating seem like a remarkable disconnect.

It's for this reason we're seeing a spike in climate lawsuits. The Environment Council of Central Queensland is taking Plibersek to court, aided by Environmental Justice Australia.

Central to their case will be the claim the minister acted unlawfully when she "refused to accept the climate harm these projects are likely to cause, as outlined in thousands of scientific reports, including from the IPCC and her own department."

The lawsuit has stopped the Mount Pleasant extension and Whitehaven's Narrabri mine from proceeding further until the case has been heard.

We can't predict the outcome of the case—it could go either way.

But we can predict the outcome of new fossil fuel projects. Dig up coal, burn it, heat the planet. We can't argue our way out of the laws of physics.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia's 116 new coal, oil and gas projects equate to 215 new coal power stations, says researcher

 

Victorian-era disease hits Scotland's poorest

A disease linked to poverty and malnutrition that once crippled the crowded slums of 19th-century Britain is on the rise in Scotland, according to data published at the weekend.

A total of 442 cases of rickets—a skeletal disease caused by a sustained lack of Vitamin D—were recorded in 2022 compared to 354 in 2018, data from 13 of 14 Scottish health boards showed.

"Generally preventable conditions such as these are indicative of Scotland having the lowest life expectancy in the UK," Chris Williams, the joint chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners Scotland, told The Sunday Times newspaper.

He also suggested environmental factors such as a colder climate could be behind the increase.

Rickets, which can lead to skeletal deformities such as bowed legs or knock knees, has been linked to a lack of exposure to sunlight and Vitamin D which is found in foods like oily fish or eggs.

Some 482 cases of the disease, which largely disappeared from Britain more than half a century ago after efforts to improve diet and exposure to sunlight, were found across England.

Most of the cases in Scotland were recorded in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area with 356 diagnoses.

Glasgow is one of the most deprived local authority areas in Scotland with 32 percent of all children in the city were estimated to be living in poverty in 2021-2022, according to Glasgow Centre for Population Health.

According to the latest data from 2019, men living in the most deprived areas of the city on average live 15.4 years less than those in the most affluent parts.

For women, the gap has increased from 8.6 to 11.6 years.

Health workers suggested an increase in diversity in the city plus lifestyle changes to more sedentary, indoor activities and cheaper, unhealthy food may have contributed to the increase in rickets.

Other so-called Victorian-era diseases such as tuberculosis and scarlet fever are also increasing in Scotland.

Data collated by The Times showed 112 cases of tuberculosis in 2022 and a sharp rise in scarlet fever diagnosis, with 223 cases in 2022 compared with 39 the year before.

In England there had been 171 cases of scurvy in 2022, with three recorded in Scotland.

"Victorian diseases are diseases of poverty and they are common in parts of the world where people are poor," Stephen Baker, a molecular microbiologist at the University of Cambridge, told the paper.

"Rickets is associated with a poor diet and the likelihood of a poor diet may be encouraged by the cost of living."

© 2023 AFP

Study shines light on 'low-value' vitamin D tests

Dismantling the myth that ancient slavery 'wasn't that bad'

SLAVERY IS NOT APPRENTICESHIP

by Chance Bonar, The Conversation

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

As someone who researches slavery in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially in the Bible, I often hear remarks like, "Slavery was totally different back then, right?" "Well, it couldn't have been that bad." "Couldn't slaves buy their freedom?"

Most people in the United States or Europe in the 21st century are more knowledgeable about the transatlantic slave trade, and live in societies deeply shaped by it. People can see the effects of modern enslavement everywhere from mass incarceration and housing segregation to voting habits.

The effects of ancient slavery, on the other hand, aren't as tangible today—and most Americans have only a vague idea of what it looked like. Some people might think of biblical stories, such as Joseph's jealous brothers selling him into slavery. Others might picture movies like "Spartacus," or the myth that enslaved people built the Egyptian pyramids.

Because these kinds of slavery took place so long ago and weren't based on modern racism, some people have the impression that they weren't as harsh or violent. That impression makes room for public figures like Christian theologian and analytic philosopher William Lane Craig to argue that ancient slavery was actually beneficial for enslaved people.

Modern factors like capitalism and racist pseudoscience did shape the transatlantic slave trade in uniquely harrowing and enduring ways. Enslaved labor, for example, shaped economists' theories about the "free market" and global trade.

But to understand slavery from that era—or to combat slavery today—we also need to understand the longer history of involuntary labor. As a scholar of ancient slavery and early Christian history, I often encounter three myths that stand in the way of understanding ancient slavery and how systems of enslavement have evolved over time.

Myth No. 1: There is one kind of 'biblical slavery'

The collection of texts that ended up in the Bible represent centuries of different writers from across the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, often in very different circumstances, making it hard to generalize about how slavery worked in "biblical" societies. Most importantly, the Hebrew Bible—what Christians call "the Old Testament"—emerged primarily in the ancient Near East, while the New Testament emerged in the early Roman Empire.

Forms of enslavement and involuntary labor in the ancient Near East, for example—areas such as Egypt, Syria and Iran—were not always chattel slavery, in which enslaved people were considered property. Rather, some people were temporarily enslaved to pay off their debts.

However, this was not the case for all people enslaved in the ancient Near East, and certainly not under the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, where millions were trafficked and forced to labor in domestic, urban and agricultural settings.

Because of the range of periods and cultures involved in the production of biblical literature, there is no such thing as a single "biblical slavery."

Nor is there a single "biblical perspective" on slavery. The most anyone can say is that no biblical texts or writers explicitly condemn the institution of enslavement or the practice of chattel slavery. More robust challenges to slavery by Christians started to emerge in the fourth century C.E., in the writings of figures like St. Gregory of Nyssa, a theologian who lived in Cappadocia, in present-day Turkey.

Myth No. 2: Ancient slavery was not as cruel

Like Myth No. 1, this myth often comes from conflating some Near Eastern and Egyptian practices of involuntary labor, such as debt slavery, with Greek and Roman chattel slavery. By focusing on other forms of involuntary labor in specific ancient cultures, it is easy to overlook the widespread practice of chattel slavery and its harshness.

However, across the ancient Mediterranean, there is evidence of a variety of horrific practices: branding, whipping, bodily disfiguration, sexual assault, torture during legal trials, incarceration, crucifixion and more. In fact, a Latin inscription from Puteoli, an ancient city near Naples, Italy, recounts what enslavers could pay undertakers to whip or crucify enslaved people.

Christians were not exempt from participating in this cruelty. Archaeologists have found collars from Italy and North Africa that enslavers placed upon their enslaved people, offering a price for their return if they fled. Some of these collars bear Christian symbols like the chi-rho (☧), which combines the first two letters of Jesus' name in Greek. One collar mentions that the enslaved person needs to be returned to their enslaver, "Felix the archdeacon."

It's difficult to apply contemporary moral standards to earlier eras, not least societies thousands of years ago. But even in an ancient world in which slavery was ever present, it is clear not everyone bought into the ideology of the elite enslavers. There are records of multiple slave rebellions in Greece and Italy—most famously, that of the escaped gladiator Spartacus.

Myth No. 3: Ancient slavery wasn't discriminatory

Slavery in the ancient Mediterranean wasn't based on race or skin color in the same way as the transatlantic slave trade, but this doesn't mean ancient systems of enslavement weren't discriminatory.

Much of the history of Greek and Roman slavery involves enslaving people from other groups: Athenians enslaving non-Athenians, Spartans enslaving non-Spartans, Romans enslaving non-Romans. Often captured or defeated through warfare, such enslaved people were either forcibly migrated to a new area or were kept on their ancestral land and compelled to do farmwork or be domestic workers for their conquerors. Roman law required a slave's "natio," or place of origin, to be announced during auctions.

Ancient Mediterranean enslavers prioritized the purchase of people from different parts of the world on account of stereotypes about their various characteristics. Varro, a scholar who wrote about the management of agriculture, argued that an enslaver shouldn't have too many enslaved people who were from the same nation or who could speak the same language, because they might organize and rebel.

Ancient slavery still depended on categorizing some groups of people as "others," treating them as though they were wholly different from those who enslaved them.

The picture of slavery that most Americans are familiar with was deeply shaped by its time, particularly modern racism and capitalism. But other forms of slavery throughout human history were no less "real." Understanding them and their causes may help challenge slavery today and in the future—especially at a time when some politicians are again claiming transatlantic slavery actually benefited enslaved people.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Slavery and trafficking occurs in 90% of recent wars and conflicts, new research shows

ENTERED APPRENTICESHIP IN TRADES CRAFTS SUCH AS CARPENTERS, PLUMBERS, ELECTRICIANS ETC. ARE CALLED INDENTURED, FOR THE FACT THAT IN THE PAST THE APPRENTICE WAS 'OWNED' LIKE HIS TOOLS BY HIS 'MASTER' OF THE TRADE. HE WAS FREED WHEN HE COMPLETED THE APPRENTICESHIP BY PAYING HIS DEBT, OR BECAME A JOURNEYMAN. HE WAS AS HE IS TODAY SUPERVISED BY HIS JOURNEYMAN. I USE HIS BECAUSE MOST TRADESMEN WERE AND REMAIN MEN.

 

New research finds way to reduce bias in children

by New York University

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Children's views of inequality may be influenced by how its causes are explained to them, finds a new study by a team of psychology researchers. The work offers insights into the factors that affect how larger social issues are perceived at a young age and points to new ways to reduce bias toward lower-status economic groups.

"When making sense of social inequalities, adults may consider the structural forces at play—for example, people may cite policies related to legacy admissions when thinking about how disparities first arise," says Rachel Leshin, a New York University doctoral student and the lead author of the study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "But children don't necessarily see differences in status in this way—and when children are prompted to consider the structural forces, they tend to interpret these structures differently from how adults do."

"However, our work shows that children can think about these matters in a similar manner as adults do if the structures driving inequality are explained to them in specific ways," she adds. "Such approaches, we found, also reduced the extent of bias children felt against a lower-income group relative to a higher-income group."

It's long been shown that children become aware of inequality from a young age and quickly develop status-related biases as a result. For example, they often view more positively those from high-status groups (e.g., those with more material resources or those who belong to groups that they associate with greater wealth) and, moreover, willingly accept group disparities.

In the PNAS study, Leshin and Marjorie Rhodes, a professor in NYU's Department of Psychology, examined how children reason about economic inequality in order to understand how the explanations provided for an inequality shaped children's responses to it, such as how they feel about a low-status group or whether they want to rectify the inequality. In doing so, the work sought to understand how these explanations could be used to reduce biased views against lower-status groups.

To do so, Leshin and Rhodes recruited more than 200 children, aged five to 10, to participate in an online study. In the study, children learned about two fictional groups—"Toogits" (a high-status group) and "Flurps" (a low-status group). The authors note that fictional groups are often used in testing children's attitudes in order to diminish bias linked to "real-world" social categories.

These groups were described as differing in wealth and resources, such as: "See this Flurp? This Flurp lives in this house. And you know what else? Grown-up Flurps have jobs that only pay them a little money. Because Flurps don't have that much money, this Flurp only got a pair of socks for his/her birthday, and he/she didn't get to have a birthday party at all."

The children were also shown images that represented where the two groups lived, with the Toogit shown in a nice, polished house and the Flurp shown in a less attractive house.

In order to unpack how the "causes" provided to explain the inequality shaped children's responses to it, the researchers gave children one of three explanations for the inequality shown through the two fictional groups: one attributed it to structural causes and cited the "high-status group" as the structures' creators (i.e., "… because of rules that [the high-status group] made up a long time ago"); another attributed it to structural causes but did not identify their creator (i.e., "… because of rules that were made up a long time ago"); and one, the control condition, didn't provide an explanation at all (i.e., "... it's been like that for a long time").

The researchers sought to understand whether and to what extent these explanations would shape children's responses to the inequality, including their level of bias against the low-status economic group.

The results showed that only the "structural explanation" that identified the high-status group as the "catalyst responsible" for the different circumstances of the two groups produced notable effects. Children in this condition reported lower levels of bias toward these fictional groups, perceived the status hierarchy as less fair, and opted to give more resources to the low-status group relative to those in the other two conditions.

By contrast, children who heard a structural explanation that did not cite the high-status group as a cause for these differences (instead citing a third-party—i.e., "the person who got to make the rules") responded no differently than did those in the control condition who heard no explanation at all.

"In engaging with children about inequality, whether it's linked to wealth or educational attainment, it's important to not only identify a structural cause underlying a disparity, such as legacy admissions, but to also identify the group influential in the implementation of those structures," explains Leshin. "We think these findings can be used to better understand how we can meaningfully engage with children about inequality."

More information: Leshin, Rachel A., Structural explanations for inequality reduce children's biases and promote rectification only if they implicate the high-status group, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2310573120. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2310573120

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Provided by New York University Racial bias in white children linked to beliefs about the causes of inequality, new study finds