The Deal With Animals with Marika S. Bell

122. What Sparks Change in Our View of Animals? PHAIR 2025 with Dr. Matti Wilks and Dr Luke Mcguire

Marika S. Bell Season 2 Episode 122

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Special Episode: Psychology for Human Animal Intergroup relations. PHAIR 2025 Register!  Transcript

Guests: Dr Matti Wilks is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her PhD at the University of Queensland, Australia, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton and Yale Universities. She is generally interested in morality and related things. Her research mostly focuses on the moral circle and moral development, with a particular focus on moral concern for distant others (distant people, non-human animals, AI) and the motivations of unusually altruistic individuals. She also examines perceptions of AI, attitudes towards cultured meat, and the natural-is-better bias. 

Dr Luke McGuire is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Exeter. His research focuses on social and moral development, with a particular focus on development in middle childhood and adolescence across a range of contexts where moral concerns conflict with social norms. Most recently, his research has come to focus on children’s and adolescents’ moral judgments about the treatment of non-human animals. This work has been published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Child Development, and Social Psychological and Personality Science. 

Book Recommendations

Matti's Rec: The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer and Jim Mason

Luke's Rec: Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guinn


Other Conference Coverage (first episodes)

34: Aggression in Dogs Conference Mini-Series: with Michael Shikashio, CDBC Part 1

58: Emerging Voices For Animals in Tourism Conference Miniseries (Part 1): Animal Experience International with Nora Livingstone

94. Rapid Environmental Change with Dr. Rachel Blakey and Dr. Kasey Fowler-Finn (S10)

Want to Sponsor a series or need a conference covered? Marika@anthrozoo.com

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