PERCEPTION OF THE RIGHTS OF THE LIVING WORLD AND MOTIVES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR Comparison of 2005 and 2010 research results

Abstract

Education and socialization form the relation of humans with their surrounding social (society) and natural world (nature). The paper examines the perception of the natural world and attempts to answer the following questions: (1) how do respondents perceive the right to life of animal species in comparison to humans, and (2) what motivates human behavior toward the natural world (plants and animals)?
The paper analyzes the results from two research (2005, N=492 and 2010, N=410) about the perception of the rights of the living world to life and ethics in human behavior toward it. Both research were conducted on the convenient samples of students at several faculties of the University of Zagreb. Theoretically, the paper relies on: (1) three dimensions of the relation toward the living world and its rights: biological (animal) egalitarianism in the living world, human domination (anthropogenic exceptionalism) and natural competitiveness, i.e. fight for survival, and (2) in the perception of ethics, i.e. motives of human behavior toward the living world, four ethical positions: duty, benefit, emotion and situation (ethical relativism).
An instrument consisting of seven statements with a seven-point scale was constructed. The results were gathered through interviews. In the analysis of data, methods of univariate (percentages), bivariate (Pearson’s correlation, analysis of variance and T-test) and multivariate (principal factor analysis with Kaiser-Guttman stopping criterion) statistics were used. Changes in perception (2005-2010) will be given, as well as factorial structures and comparison with socio-demographic characteristics.