Beliefs About Fishes and Chickens & Their Relation to Animal-Positive Behaviors in Brazil

Background

Animals raised for food generally receive significantly less attention and funding than companion animals (Faunalytics, 2019). In Brazil, as in most countries, small-bodied animals like chickens and fish are killed in particularly massive numbers: over six billion chickens and over 700,000 tonnes of fishes were slaughtered in Brazil in 2018 alone (Faunalytics, 2020). The Brazilian government has enacted a number of progressive protections for domesticated and wild animals, but has not passed legislation that lays out protections specific to egg-laying hens, broiler chickens, or fishes raised for food (World Animal Protection, 2020). As a result of the lack of detailed regulations, Brazil receives a “D” grade for its protection of animals used in farming from World Animal Protection.

While a number of studies show that many Brazilians have a preference for farm production systems that give animals greater freedom, less is known about the relationship between beliefs about farmed animals and willingness to take pro-animal actions (Yunes et al, 2017; Vargas-Bello-Perez et al, 2017). This study replicates our study of U.S. beliefs about fishes and chickens to better understand which beliefs the Brazilian public has about small-bodied animals, as well as how these beliefs are related to animal-positive behaviors. Specifically, we examined the relationships between various beliefs and a willingness to reduce consumption of chickens or fishes and to sign a petition calling for improved living and slaughter conditions. Documenting these associations is a first step toward understanding beliefs and attitudes that drive pro-animal behavior in Brazil. The findings presented in this report may also prove useful to animal advocates who are seeking to target a Brazilian audience more effectively.

Key Findings

1. About 70% of people signed a fish or chicken welfare petition. Advocates may find that many people are willing to provide their signature for improved conditions without needing to be convinced of the initiative’s importance. People were also slightly more willing to sign a welfare petition than to pledge to reduce their fish or chicken consumption.
2. A majority of people committed to reduce their consumption of fish or chicken, with more people taking the fish diet pledge. More than 60% of people pledged to eat less fish and just over half pledged to eat less chicken. These findings suggest that advocates seeking dietary change may have considerable success even with limited messaging highlighting the benefits of such a change.
3. Some pro-animal beliefs are already common, but there is room for raising awareness on other topics. For example, large majorities recognize the importance of air and water quality to chickens and fishes. However, less than half of people recognized that fish are capable of positive emotions, and nearly three out of four people believed that chickens act mostly out of instinct. More commonly held beliefs likely do not require more information and can be invoked as necessary, but additional advocacy focused on less commonly held beliefs could increase the frequency of pro-animal beliefs among the public.
4. Several fish-related beliefs were identified as potentially effective targets for advocates working on dietary pledges to reduce fish consumption. The beliefs that had the largest correlations with signing a pledge were that many fish farms have horrible living conditions, that fish can feel pain, and that fish can feel negative emotions like fear. The belief that fish have no personality was associated with less likelihood of taking the pledge. 
5. The beliefs that had the largest correlations with fish welfare petition signatures were that fish can feel pain, that fish need room to explore and exercise, and that fish can feel positive emotions like pleasure. Advocates working on petitions for fish welfare may want to incorporate these themes in their messaging and presentation.
6. The beliefs that had the largest correlations with signing a pledge to reduce chicken consumption were that chickens need room to explore and exercise, that most chickens are raised inhumanely, that chickens can bond with humans, and that many chicken farms have horrible living conditions. Those trying to get people to reduce their consumption of chicken may wish to focus on these themes.
7. The beliefs that had the largest correlations with chicken welfare petition signatures were that chickens need room to explore and exercise and that most chickens are raised inhumanely. Advocates working on corporate campaigns may find messaging around these beliefs leads to an increase in petition signatures for chicken causes.

Recommendations

1. Try messaging around the top beliefs to see if you can improve your advocacy efforts. Based on these findings, messaging around emotions, suffering, and personality will likely lead to the best results, even outside the context of diet pledges and welfare petitions. Slightly different beliefs were also important for each animal and each outcome. Therefore, we’d suggest focusing on the strongest messages in each group of beliefs, trying them out, and keeping track of their effectiveness in order to get the best results!
2. Don’t be afraid to ask. These findings suggest that the Brazilian public is already fairly open to taking consumption reduction pledges and signing petitions for improved animal welfare. You may see a significant amount of pro-animal behavior simply by asking if people would consider it.
3. Try stacking your asks. People were more likely to agree to sign a petition than to take a diet pledge to reduce their consumption. If you have interest in both outcomes, try asking for the petition signature first, and then go for a diet pledge after they’ve signed the petition. This may help increase diet pledges due to something known as “behavior consistency”—people generally want to be consistent in what they do, so following one successful ask with another related ask may increase uptake. Be careful to avoid overloading people with requests, though.
4. Explore the results from other countries and check back for more recommendations as our program of research focusing on chickens and fishes continues. We have also examined these beliefs in other countries, including the U.S., Canada, China, and India. We will also be using experimental research to provide stronger recommendations about how these beliefs can be leveraged to alter behaviors. Although we have provided preliminary recommendations in this report, an experimental comparison of the most common and strongly associated beliefs is needed to see which can be used most effectively. This research will focus on the U.S., but may have implications for future research in Brazil. Stay tuned for more from our line of research into small-bodied animals!

Research Team

This project is a collaboration between researchers at Faunalytics and Mercy For Animals (MFA): namely, Zach Wulderk, Jo Anderson, and Tom Beggs of Faunalytics and Courtney Dillard, Walter Sanchez-Suarez, and Sebastian Quaade of MFA. We are indebted to Meredith Hui, Rashmit Arora, Diogo Fernandes, and Vitor Clemente for their assistance with linguistic and cultural translation, and to Cristina Mendonça, Meredith Hui, and Nikunj Sharma for their invaluable feedback.

We’d like to thank the CEA Animal Welfare Fund, the Culture and Animals Foundation, and an anonymous donor for funding this work, and the Tipping Point Private Foundation for funding the report translations.

Method Overview

This research is a replication of Faunalytics’ 2020 report Beliefs About Fish and Chickens & Their Relation to Animal-Positive Behaviors, which focused on U.S. adults’ beliefs about these small-bodied animals. For this project, we explored beliefs held by adults in Brazil. We translated Faunalytics’ previous survey for use with a Brazilian audience, and confirmed with experts that the questions were culturally relevant. On the advice of cultural advisors, we added two belief questions that were not part of the U.S. survey: “Fish/Chickens are easy to raise yourself” and “Fish/Chickens are aggressive.” These were added to reflect potential beliefs arising from the more common experience of raising chickens at home in Brazil. We examined 7 categories of beliefs: about emotions, suffering, personality, intelligence, socialness, consuming the animal, and an “other” category. There were several beliefs in each category, meaning the full list consisted of 35 beliefs about fishes and 34 beliefs about chickens. 

We surveyed 1,126 Brazilian adults and randomly assigned them to either the fish or chicken version of the survey. We then asked them to rate their level of agreement or disagreement with each of the beliefs for their assigned animal. These surveys were conducted in Brazilian Portuguese, but results will be presented in English for consistency across reports. The survey instrument can be found in its original language on Open Science Framework. 

We examined two key outcome measures in order to understand how much each belief was associated with important behaviors related to the welfare of each animal: willingness to take a diet pledge and willingness to sign a welfare petition. For the diet pledge outcome, each participant was asked if they would pledge to reduce their consumption of their assigned animal. For example, participants assigned the fish condition were shown a prompt that read, “In recent years, many people have begun to reduce how much fish they eat, a pattern that is expected to continue. Will you pledge to reduce your own fish consumption?” Those who agreed were then asked to specify the amount they would limit themselves to and to provide a digital signature for their commitment. 

For the petition outcome, each participant was asked if they would sign a petition to improve the welfare of their assigned animal. For example, participants in the chicken condition were shown a prompt that read, “We would like to give you the opportunity to sign a petition that would encourage legal reforms to improve the lives of farmed chickens. Specifically, the petition is designed to build support for regulations that would ensure that chickens raised on farms would have improved living and slaughter conditions. Would you be willing to sign this petition?” Participants were able to respond with “yes please” or “no thanks.” 

The diet pledge and petition questions were presented at the end of the survey, where they saw a prompt reading, “Great, thank you! Before you finish, we have a couple of quick requests for you. You don’t have to agree to either, but please answer each question.” We specified that respondents’ participation incentive did not rely on them committing to the diet pledge or signing the welfare petition. The two outcome measures were counterbalanced, meaning that half of the participants saw the diet pledge first and half saw the welfare petition first. 

Throughout this report, we use the plural “fishes” rather than “fish” in order to acknowledge that we are discussing a collection of individuals. Exceptions are made for English translations of survey questions, which use the plural “fish” to reflect its usage by the majority of the English-speaking public. The appropriate Brazilian Portuguese wording was used for the survey when it was administered.

All top-line descriptive statistics were calculated using data weighted to match population values for gender, age, race, and region. However, as the differences between the weighted and unweighted data were not large, inferential statistics were calculated using unweighted data to avoid introducing additional sources of variance. Additional information on participant traits can be found in the Supplementary Materials.

Results

How Many People Took the Pledge and Signed the Petition?

Figure 1: Rates of Animal-Positive Behavior

69% of Brazilian participants agreed to sign the fish welfare petition and slightly fewer, 61%, pledged to reduce their consumption of fish. Among the participants who pledged to reduce their consumption of fish, 10% pledged to never eat fish, 83% pledged to eat it less than once per week, and 4% pledged to eat it only 1-3 times per week. 

While 70% of participants signed the chicken welfare petition, the proportion of people pledging to reduce their chicken consumption was considerably smaller at only 52%. Even though participants were less willing to take the chicken diet pledge than to sign the welfare petition, just over half of individuals took the pledge, suggesting that advocates should not be afraid to make this ask.

Of chicken pledge-takers, 4% pledged to never eat chicken, 61% pledged to eat it less than once per week, and 33% pledged to eat it only 1-3 times per week. 

The Most Common Brazilian Beliefs about Fishes & Chickens

The following figures show all of the beliefs included in the study and the proportion of people who either agreed or disagreed with each, depending on which value was greater. This can give a sense of how common each of the beliefs are, which can be helpful in deciding which beliefs already exist and can be tapped into, and which beliefs need to be encouraged.

Fishes

Figure 2: Beliefs About Fishes

Chickens

Figure 3: Beliefs About Chickens

Which Categories of Beliefs Were Most Strongly Associated with Animal-Positive Behaviors?

Each individual belief is presented in the figures in the next section, grouped by category for each animal. The relative importance of each item within a group of beliefs can be seen for both diet pledges and petition signatures. We also discuss the top-performing individual beliefs across the categories. In general, average correlations for the beliefs in each category were small (< .20), with beliefs generally showing larger correlations with diet pledges than with petition signatures.

Table 1: Average Correlations With Pro-Animal Behavior (Overall Rankings)

Notes. Given the ordinal nature of the beliefs scale, Spearman rank-order correlations were used for all belief correlations.

Beliefs About Fishes

Belief categories are presented in order of the size of their average correlation with taking the diet pledge.

Fish Emotions Beliefs

Beliefs related to fish emotions showed the largest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .13, SD = .04) and signing the petition (r = .09, SD = .04) out of all the categories of beliefs. In other words, people who believe that fishes experience emotions were more likely to take the diet pledge and sign the petition. Because emotion-related beliefs had the strongest correlations with both the fish pledge and petition, advocates focusing on these asks should consider including an emotion component to their messaging. 

Looking at the strongest individual beliefs associated with each outcome, people who believe that fishes can feel negative emotions like fear or who believe that fishes can feel stress were more likely to take diet pledges. Those who believe that fishes can feel positive emotions like pleasure or that they can feel stress were more likely to sign the petition.

Figure 4: Fish Emotion Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Fish Suffering Beliefs

Beliefs related to fish suffering had the second largest average correlation with both the diet pledge (r = .11, SD = .07) and petition signatures (r = .07, SD = .04). The top beliefs most associated with taking the diet pledge were that many fish farms have horrible living conditions and that fishes feel pain. The belief that fishes feel pain was also stronger among petition signers, along with the belief that fishes need room to explore and exercise. 

The higher average correlation of the fish suffering category with both the diet pledge and the petition suggests that advocates could benefit from emphasizing the ability of fishes to suffer. 

Figure 5: Fish Suffering Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Fish Personality Beliefs

Beliefs around fish personalities had the third highest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .11, SD = .06) and the third lowest with signing the petition (r = .05, SD = .03). Individuals who believe that fishes had no personality were less likely to take the diet pledge, while those who believe that fishes are curious and can bond with humans were more likely to take the pledge. There were no personality-related beliefs associated with an increased likelihood of signing the petition.

In other words, advocates interested in reducing fish consumption may have success by emphasizing aspects of fish personalities⁠⁠, such as their curiosity and ability to bond with humans⁠, while other routes may be more fruitful for those seeking petition signatures.

Figure 6: Fish Personality Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Fish Intelligence Beliefs

Fish intelligence beliefs had the fourth strongest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .09, SD = .07) and second weakest with signing the petition (r = .05, SD = .04). Individuals who believe that fishes are more intelligent than people give them credit for were more likely to both take the diet pledge and sign the petition. Those who believe that fishes can learn were also more likely to take the diet pledge.

Figure 7: Fish Intelligence Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Fish Social Beliefs

Beliefs related to the social lives of fishes had the third weakest average correlation with willingness to take a diet pledge (r = .07, SD = .06) and the third strongest with petition signatures (r = .06, SD = .02). Those who believe that fishes can communicate with each other were more likely to take the diet pledge. 

Figure 8: Fish Social Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Fish Consumption Beliefs

Beliefs related to the consumption of fish had the second weakest correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .06, SD = .03) and the weakest correlation with signing the petition (r = .05, SD = .04). Those who believe that fish is a good source of protein were more likely to sign the welfare petition. 

Individuals who believe that fish products labeled “sustainable” come from fishes with good welfare were less likely to take the diet pledge but more likely to sign the petition. 

For advocates, this finding highlights the importance of considering the audience of a message and the ultimate goal of a campaign. While one message may be effective when seeking petition signatures, it may have the opposite effect on reducing consumption because it may suggest that it is acceptable to continue consuming fish. 

Figure 9: Fish Consumption Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Other Fish Beliefs

The weakest average correlation for taking the diet pledge (r = .05, SD = .04) was with “other” fish beliefs, though they had the fourth highest average correlation with petition signatures (r = .06, SD = .03). Those who believe fishes are gross were more likely to take the diet pledge but less likely to sign the petition.

Figure 10: Other Fish Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Beliefs about Chickens

Belief categories are presented in order of the size of their average correlation with taking the diet pledge.

Chicken Suffering Beliefs

Beliefs related to chicken suffering had the highest average correlation with both taking the diet pledge (r = .15, SD = .07) and signing the petition (r = .12, SD = .04). In both cases, the strongest associations were found with the beliefs that chickens need room to explore and exercise, most chickens are raised inhumanely, and many chicken farms have horrible living conditions. 

The higher correlations between suffering beliefs and both pledges and signatures compared to other categories suggest that this may be a particularly useful messaging approach for advocates to take. Because of this, and because the same beliefs were associated with animal-positive behaviors, advocates may find success stacking asks. In other words, they may be able to ask for diet pledges and petition signatures using the same messaging. 

Figure 11: Chicken Suffering Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Chicken Emotions Beliefs

Beliefs related to the emotions of chickens had the second highest average correlation for both taking the diet pledge (r = .15, SD = .02) and signing the petition (r = .09, SD = .00). For taking the diet pledge, the belief that chickens can feel positive emotions had the strongest association, and for signing the petition, the belief that chickens can feel stress had the strongest association. However, all three beliefs were correlated with both actions, suggesting that advocates may find success when emphasizing any type of emotions among chickens. 

Figure 12: Chicken Emotion Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Chicken Personality Beliefs

Personality beliefs related to chickens had the third highest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .11, SD = .06) and third lowest with signing the petition (r = .05, SD = .03). Believing that chickens can bond with humans, play, and are loving had the strongest associations with taking the diet pledge. Those who believe that chickens don’t have personalities were less likely to take the diet pledge. The belief that chickens are loving was also associated with signing the welfare petition.

By emphasizing the bonding, playful, and loving parts of chickens’ personalities, advocates seeking a reduction in chicken consumption may be able to appeal to those who are already aware of these traits while simultaneously providing additional information to those who aren’t aware of them.

Figure 13: Chicken Personality Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Other Chicken Beliefs

“Other” beliefs related to chickens had the fourth highest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .10, SD = .07) and the third highest with signing the welfare petition (r = .08, SD = .04). The belief that chickens are beautiful had the strongest association with both the pledge and the petition, suggesting that advocates may find success with this message regardless of whether they are seeking petition signatures or diet pledges. People who believe that chickens carry diseases like salmonella were also more likely to take the diet pledge.

Figure 14: Other Chicken Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Chicken Intelligence Beliefs

Chicken intelligence beliefs had the third weakest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .09, SD = .06) and the second weakest with signing the petition (r = .04, SD = .02). Those who believe chickens are more intelligent than people give them credit for and that chickens can learn had stronger associations with taking the diet pledge. Advocates seeking to reduce chicken consumption may have more success when emphasizing the value of chickens’ intelligence rather than comparing their intelligence to the intelligence of other animals. No particularly strong associations stood out for signing the petition.

Figure 15: Chicken Intelligence Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Chicken Social Beliefs

Beliefs about the social nature of chickens had the second lowest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .08, SD = .01) and the fourth highest with signing the petition (r = .08, SD = .00). Individuals who believe that chickens can communicate with each other were more likely to take the diet pledge. 

Figure 16: Chicken Social Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Chicken Consumption Beliefs

For both taking the diet pledge (r = .05, SD = .04) and signing the welfare petition (r = .02, SD = .01), beliefs related to the consumption of chicken had the lowest average correlation. Those who believe that eating chicken doesn’t contribute as much to climate change as eating other animals were less likely to take the diet pledge. Because the relationship of consumption beliefs with animal-positive behaviors was weaker than for other categories of beliefs, advocates may find more success with those other categories. However, it may also be beneficial to explain the environmental benefits of reducing meat consumption. 

Figure 17: Chicken Consumption Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

What Role Did Participant Traits Play?

Table 2 shows the rates of each pro-animal behavior for demographic groups that showed significant differences using a chi-square test of independence. Trends within ordinal variables were also identified using simple logistic regressions. These characteristics include age, income, education, and frequency of fish and chicken consumption. More detailed results can be found in the Supplementary Materials.

• Gender: Men were less likely than women or other genders to take the chicken diet pledge, but there were no other gender-based differences.
• Age: In general, older participants were less likely to take the fish diet pledge than younger participants.
• Income: Individuals with higher incomes tended to sign both the fish and chicken petitions more often than those with lower incomes.
• Education: Individuals with higher levels of education signed the chicken petition more often than those with lower levels of education.
• Region: The only regional differences came in the Southeast, where respondents were more likely to take the fish diet pledge than other regions, and the Central-West, where respondents were less likely to take the fish diet pledge than other regions.
• Guardians of companion animals: Guardians of companion animals were more likely to sign the fish welfare petition than non-guardians, but were otherwise just as likely to take a given animal-positive action as non-guardians. 
• Recent fish consumption: Participants who ate higher amounts of fish were more likely to take the chicken diet pledge. 
• No clear relationships exist between recent chicken consumption and pro-animal behaviors.

As a note, people who already abstained entirely from eating fish or chicken were not offered the diet pledge for that animal.

In addition to the characteristics shown discussed above, we looked for differences based on race (white, Pardo, Black, or other) and whether participants had fished or handled chickens recently. There were no significant differences between groups, which means that the overall percentages should be used for all groups to avoid over-interpretation of non-significant differences. As a reminder, those percentages were as follows: 61% of participants took the diet pledge to reduce their consumption of fish, and 52% agreed to reduce their consumption of chicken. 69% of participants agreed to sign the fish welfare petition and 70% agreed to sign the chicken welfare petition. 

Table 2: Percent Who Took the Diet Pledge or Signed the Petition Based on Group Membership

Notes. An asterisk (*) indicates that there was a statistically significant difference between groups. For details on how these analyses were conducted, see the Supplementary Materials.

Conclusions

This study has added substantially to our body of knowledge regarding public beliefs about chickens and fishes in Brazil and how they relate to animal-positive actions.

Overall, 69% of participants agreed to sign the fish welfare petition, and 70% agreed to the chicken welfare petition. 61% of participants committed to reduce their consumption of fish, while 52% pledged to reduce their consumption of chicken.

Among those who pledged to reduce their fish consumption,10% committed to reducing it entirely, 83% pledged to eat it less than once per week, and 4% pledged to eat it 1-3 times per week. These participants were willing to reduce their consumption to a greater degree than participants who pledged to reduce their chicken consumption. Of the participants who took the chicken pledge, 4% pledged to never eat chicken, 61% pledged to eat it less than once per week, and 33% pledged to eat it between 1-3 times per week. These reduction rates suggest that animal advocates may have more success asking for reductions in chicken and fish consumption rather than outright prohibition.

Which Beliefs Were Most Common?

The relative prevalence of various beliefs are summarized in Figures 1 and 2. These results can serve as useful guides for animal advocates when designing advocacy campaigns. For example, animal advocates may want to create campaign messaging that appeals to beliefs which are both widely held and associated with animal-positive actions in order to maximize behavior change. As an example, advocates could emphasize that fishes need space to explore and exercise or that chickens can feel pain. Similarly, showing individuals evidence that fish are loving may be an effective approach for encouraging reductions in fish consumption.

Beliefs that were less commonly held but which still had notable associations with pro-animal behaviors could be strong candidates for campaigns aimed at raising awareness. Advocates following this approach might consider displaying images of chickens playing or providing evidence of chickens’ and fishes’ capacity to learn. These messages could grow the proportion of people who hold beliefs associated with taking the dietary pledge. Similarly, advocates could show research demonstrating that fishes feel positive emotions like pleasure when seeking signatures on fish welfare petitions in Brazil.

In general, understanding the prevalence of various beliefs can help advocates target efforts based on where most people currently stand.

Beliefs Most Strongly Associated With Pro-Animal Behavior

Groups of Beliefs

Our calculations of the average correlation of the items in each group of beliefs, as well as the effect sizes displayed in Figures 3-16, can help advocates understand which groups of beliefs were most strongly associated with animal-positive behavior. For both chickens and fishes, beliefs about emotions and suffering were the two groups most strongly correlated with each animal-positive behavior. Personality beliefs were also among the groups with stronger associations with fish and chicken diet pledges. Conversely, the average correlations for consumption beliefs were consistently among the weakest for each animal-positive behavior.

Our results indicate that advocates who emphasize the emotions and suffering of chickens and fishes may be more successful in their efforts to get petition signatures or consumption reduction pledges than advocates who do not focus on these characteristics. Additionally, messaging that highlights chicken and fish personalities may also lead to a higher number of diet pledges. While some beliefs within these groups were among the most common, many were less common. For this reason, advocates are encouraged to look at the prevalence of individual beliefs to determine whether appealing to these beliefs or focusing on raising awareness is a more suitable approach.

Beliefs related to the consumption of fishes or chickens were uniformly among the least strongly associated with taking either dietary pledge. In other words, advocates should avoid focusing on these beliefs. A notable exception is the belief that fish products labeled “sustainable” come from fishes with good welfare, which was positively associated with signing the fish welfare petition. Future research should explore this association further to see what actionable insights advocates might be able to gain.

It is important to note that ranking belief groups according to average correlations has its limitations. The individual beliefs within a group of beliefs are not always associated with behavior in the same way or to the same extent. For any beliefs advocates are considering using, we suggest paying closer attention to the strength and direction of correlation for each individual belief than to the average correlation for the overall group.

Individual Beliefs

Within the emotions and suffering belief groups, beliefs that fishes and chickens can experience pain and stress, and require space to explore and exercise were all associated with both animal-positive actions. Because these beliefs were also prevalent among participants, advocates could consider highlighting them by, for example, showing how little space chickens and fishes are afforded in intensive growing operations. Beliefs about chickens’ and fishes’ positive and negative emotional experiences were less common, but were also correlated with animal-positive behaviors. Advocates may wish to focus on raising the public’s awareness of these capacities as a possible way to increase willingness to take diet pledges and sign welfare petitions.

A number of chicken suffering beliefs, particularly the beliefs that chickens don’t mind living in barren environments, that they are unbothered living in overcrowded environments, and that air and water quality are not important to them were associated with less willingness to take pro-animal actions. While these views were not among the most common, they are still prevalent enough to warrant attention. Research suggests that these views may be largely misinformed (Nordquist et al., 2017; Gomes et al, 2014; Campbell et al, 2019; Bersch, 2019). Efforts to shift these views may help reduce barriers to uptake of animal-positive action, although little is known about how effective informational campaigns will actually be at shifting these views among the populations that hold them.

Advocates should also note that while believing fishes experience positive emotions had a significant correlation with signing the welfare petition, this same belief did not have a notable association with taking the diet pledge. Instead, believing that fishes experience negative emotions was significantly associated with taking the diet pledge, but not with signing the welfare petition. In other words, advocates should distinguish their messages to emphasize positive or negative emotions of fish depending on whether they are seeking signatures or reductions in fish consumption. Alternatively, advocates could choose to emphasize other beliefs, such as fishes’ ability to feel pain, that are significantly correlated with both signing the welfare petition and taking the diet pledge. 

The beauty of chickens and the underappreciated intelligence of fishes also stood out among individual beliefs for their notable correlations with animal-positive behavior. The beliefs that chickens are beautiful and that fishes are more intelligent than people give them credit for were both associated with taking the diet pledge and signing the welfare petition. 

Some research has shown that emotional reactions—like the feeling someone could get from seeing a particularly beautiful or intelligent animal—can have an effect on judgments and decision-making (Angie, et al., 2011). Contrasting the beauty and intelligence of an animal with the reality on industrial farms could be an effective strategy for encouraging pro-animal behavior. For instance, advocates could compare images of an especially colorful chicken or fishes solving complex problems with the harsh realities of chicken and fish farms. Because the belief that big chicken farms are gross was also associated with pro-animal behavior, using this strategy may be particularly effective for chickens.

Participant Characteristics

This study also allowed us to examine differences in willingness to sign welfare petitions and commit to diet pledges across participant characteristics, as summarized in Table 2. These insights can help advocates understand which social groups to target to increase the number of individuals taking animal-positive action.

We find that men were less likely than women or other genders to pledge to reduce their consumption of chicken. Moreover, older participants were less likely to take the fish pledge. However, these were the only clear differences in animal-positive behavior across gender and age. 

There were no significant differences in willingness to take the diet pledges or sign the petitions across race. This highlights the need for advocates’ efforts to be inclusive of Brazil’s diverse population.

Compared to those with lower incomes, participants with higher incomes were more likely to sign both welfare petitions. Higher levels of education were also associated with willingness to sign the chicken petition compared to lower levels of education. Despite these differences, more than half of participants with lower incomes or levels of education still took diet pledges and signed petitions at rates in most cases. In other words, advocates should not focus their efforts exclusively on the wealthy or the highly educated. Advocates should also keep in mind that even though many people may be open to the idea of adopting animal-positive behaviors, barriers such as limited access to affordable plant-based options may make it more difficult for some people to transform their willingness into action. 

In terms of geographic variation, participants living in the Southeast region were more likely to take the fish diet pledge, whereas individuals living in the Central-West region were less likely to take the fish diet pledge. Further research should explore these regional differences.

Finally, while individuals living with companion animals were more likely to sign the fish welfare petition, these individuals did not significantly differ from non-companion animal guardians in any other animal-positive behavior. Advocates seeking to improve fish living conditions may wish to compare fishes’ and companion animals’ abilities to suffer. 

Future Directions

Although this research provides some useful guidelines for chicken and fish welfare advocacy, more research is required to understand whether these beliefs are a cause of animal-positive behaviors, or whether they are merely associated with them.In a continuation of this line of research, we will also be testing interventions that will attempt to use some of the beliefs that appear most important based on this research to understand whether shifting these beliefs can increase animal-positive behaviors. This will take the form of an experiment (randomized controlled trial), where different groups of people are shown an intervention that targets specific beliefs to see if any of them influence animal-positive behaviors.

Supplementary Materials

Method: Additional Details

Participants and Power

Participants were recruited using a panel company called CINT. In keeping with Faunalytics’ Data Quality Assurance Plan, we performed data checks to screen out answers that may be fraudulent or participants who fail attention checks.

Responses that showed poor data quality or the failure of attention-check questions were excluded. After removing participants in the data cleaning process, we had a total of 549 participants in the fish condition and 577 in the chicken condition. Power analyses indicated that a sample size of 497 per animal would allow for the detection of a small-to-medium effect size (rho = .16) with a power of .95 in a point-biserial correlation (critical t = 1.96), so we were well-powered for our goals. For additional details on the measures, power analysis, analysis plan, and more, please see the pre-registration documents on the Open Science Framework.

Table 3: Participants Traits

Correlational Analyses

Spearman rank-order correlations were used for analyses because the outcome variables were dichotomous and beliefs were rated on a Likert scale. They can be interpreted the same way as standard Pearson correlations. The scores range from -1 to 1, with scores further away from zero indicating a stronger relationship between the variables in question. It is also an indication of effect size.

Petition Measure

For consistency with the first report in this line of research, the petition outcome variable is measured using agreement to sign the welfare petition rather than whether participants clicked the link to the petition. 

Participant Traits Analyses

For our analysis of participant traits, all of which were categorical, we used chi-square tests of independence to test for differences across levels of each trait category. For ordinal variables, we used simple logistic regressions to determine trends.

When conducting chi-square tests on tables with cells containing expected values below 5, Monte Carlo simulations were necessarily used to compute p-values.

Table 4: Summarized Chi-Square Results

Table 5: Summarized Logistic Regression Results

Average Correlation by Group of Beliefs

The average correlation for each group of beliefs are shown in Table 6 for fishes and Table 7 for chickens. These were also provided in text in the body of the report.

To get these numbers, we averaged the absolute value of each of the correlations for the items in a group for each of the outcome variables. Because the number of responses used for each correlation was approximately the same, this “average of averages” approach does not weight any correlation unduly. 

Table 6: Average Correlation of Fish Beliefs by Category

Table 7: Average Correlation of Chicken Beliefs by Category

As noted in the Results section, beliefs around the emotions, suffering, and personalities of fishes were the categories most strongly associated with diet pledges. Beliefs around fish emotions and suffering were also most strongly associated with petition signatures. 

For chickens, the suffering and emotion groups of beliefs were most strongly associated with pledges, and the beliefs around suffering were most strongly associated with petition signatures.

Individual Beliefs

Table 8 and Table 9 below contain the correlation results for all individual beliefs. By default, the beliefs with the strongest average association with the two outcome variables are at the top of the table. The “Mean” column contains a zero-centered average of the 7-point Likert scale used for each belief.

Table 8: Individual Fish Beliefs

Notes. An asterisk (*) indicates a statistically significant correlation. 

Table 9: Individual Chicken Beliefs

Notes. An asterisk (*) indicates a statistically significant correlation.