How Ethical Ideologies Relate to Public Attitudes Toward Nonhuman Animals: The Japanese Case

How ethical ideologies relate to public attitudes toward nonhuman animals is an increasingly prominent topic, yet it has been largely unstudied, particularly in Asian countries such as Japan. Using the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ), Animal Attitude Scale (AAS), and Animal Issue Scale (AIS) in the present study, we examined how ethical ideologies and human demographics relate to public attitudes toward animals from a Japanese cultural perspective. The results of a questionnaire (N = 900) distributed throughout Japan indicate that public attitudes toward animals were positively associated with idealism and negatively associated with relativism. These findings are similar to those from China, but partly in contrast with those from the United States, where relativism was unrelated to attitudes toward animals. Our findings add to a growing recognition of how individual philosophy relates to public attitudes toward animals in Asian countries.