Volume X · Intermediate level
Biases and Their Influence
How biases influence our decisions that affect animals
About this volume
This book discusses how various kinds of biases distort our perception of the situation of nonhuman animals, influence the way we discuss our obligations toward them, and also influence the choice of activist strategies to help them.
ISBN 978-65-01-66081-3 · 1st edition, August 2025. Original text by Luciano Carlos Cunha, translated into English.
In a nutshell
Why do so many people, animal advocates included, neglect the biggest problems? This volume brings together the cognitive biases that distort our decisions about animals: scope neglect, the identifiable victim effect, status quo bias, motivated reasoning, moral licensing and many others.
For kids
Sometimes our brain tricks us: we care more about one puppy with a name than about millions of fish without names. Knowing these brain tricks helps us be fairer.
You will learn
- What biases are and how they affect ethical decisions
- Why we neglect the problems with the most victims
- The biases that make us ignore wild animals and the future
- How to reduce their influence on ourselves
It helps to have read: Volume VIII helps.
Starting from scratch?
Every chapter has a simplified version, written for readers new to the topic. Read the simple version first, then the author’s full text.
- Biases That Lead Us to Neglect the Problems with the Most Victims
- Biases That Incline Us to Neglect the Situation of Wild Animals
- Biases That Contribute to the Neglect of the Long Term and of S-Risks
- Cognitive Biases and Their Influence on Our Decisions That Affect Animals
- Motivated Reasoning and Its Influence on the Evaluation of Arguments
- Some Biases That Can Influence the Choice of Strategies and How the Public Receives Them
Chapters
- 1Biases That Lead Us to Neglect the Problems with the Most Victims12 min
Biases are psychological tendencies that systematically lead to faulty reasoning; several of them (the identifiable victim effect, scope neglect, the collapse of compassion) make the problems with the most victims precisely the most neglected ones.
- 2Biases That Incline Us to Neglect the Situation of Wild Animals28 min
Several biases lead us to neglect wild animals: status quo bias, a preference for certain kinds of animals, the number of victims, the belief that nature is good (as in the just-world hypothesis), attempts to justify suffering, doubts about feasibility, and underestimating the public.
- 3Biases That Contribute to the Neglect of the Long Term and of S-Risks14 min
Biases such as temporal bias, difficulty dealing with probabilities and expected value, and overconfidence in intuitions contribute to neglecting the long term and s-risks; the answer is to keep an open mind about counterintuitive questions.
- 4Cognitive Biases and Their Influence on Our Decisions That Affect Animals30 min
Many biases make it hard to revise our beliefs and strategies about animals: status quo bias, system justification, moral licensing, the affect heuristic, the mere-exposure effect, the sunk cost fallacy, illusory superiority, the bias blind spot, the illusory truth effect, authority bias, and others.
- 5Motivated Reasoning and Its Influence on the Evaluation of Arguments4 min
Motivated reasoning means judging arguments with different levels of rigor depending on whether we like the conclusion; in addition, many people raise objections they do not believe in, as excuses; this explains why attempts to justify speciesism are rarely examined rigorously.
- 6Some Biases That Can Influence the Choice of Strategies and How the Public Receives Them15 min
Activists are also affected by biases when choosing strategies (negativity, choice overload, nostalgia, order effects), and so is the public when receiving the message; presenting the arguments for considering animals first can change how the rest is received.