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Presenters: Cooney, Glasser

Nick Cooney
Founder and director, The Humane League

-How and why can our movement win?
-Technical knowledge base required to succeed in all professions; same applies to animal advocacy
-What's our knowledge base? Humane Psychology
-Psychology as a road map to social change
-Naive Psychology: our common misperceptions about what motivates others and ourselves
-Research example of naive psychology in action
-Thus: research on psychology and related fields (sociology, diffusion studies, communication) is vital to understanding how to persuade others to live more compassionately towards animals
-Examples of researched vs. non-researched approaches:  appearance; self-expression; bias of concern; motivation
-"Bottom line" mentality of approaching animal activism

Carol Glasser
Research director, Humane Research Council

This talk will discuss various ways in which research can inform advocacy, including providing basic information about campaign topics, behavioral and attitudinal trends of the target audience, and developing successful marketing strategies for campaigns. The need for research to influence and be reflected in advocacy will be emphasized and successful animal advocacy organizations and campaigns that have rooted their advocacy in research and theory will be highlighted.

The talk will also address the need for research to be accessible to advocates outside of academic institutions or large social movement organizations. Groups such as the Humane Research Council (HRC) have begun to take some necessary steps by making professional research and resources available for free, using non-profit models to support academic and research endeavors, and by using the internet effectively as a vehicle of disseminating research and theoretical advances. The importance of these strategies will be discussed and the areas in which scholars, researchers, and larger animal advocacy groups need to make bigger strides will be addressed, and suggestions on how better orient research toward advocacy will be provided.

Finally, animal advocates will be provided suggestions and instruction regarding the variety of resources currently available, including free resources such as HRC’s research database and research primers, various human-animal studies journals, and the public library systems in many communities. Suggestions will be provided on ways to use research to improve advocacy and campaigns and introductory instruction will be provided detailing how to access article databases and conduct targeted web searches.