An increasing number of people is concerned about the ethics of meat consumption despite cherishing meat products. In the present research, we examined whether the desire to resolve such ambivalence about eating meat can motivate meat reduction. In a preliminary study, a content-analysis of 1,328 qualitative evaluations of eating meat indicated that animal ethics and personal health beliefs were the prevailing components of meat ambivalence. However, the correlations of ambivalent attitudes with self-reported and intended meat reduction were explained by aversive feelings of conflict. Study 1 drew on a 6-day food diary with 7,485 observations in the German general public, replicating the association of ambivalence and meat reduction and identifying sociodemographic predictors of meat ambivalence. In Study 2, we showed that feelings of conflict, but not the ambivalent attitude itself, motivated participants to eat less meat when they introspected on their ambivalence. Study 3 (preregistered) replicated this experimental effect and demonstrated a serial mediation through anticipated ambivalence resolution and effortful information seeking. These findings in diverse samples from Germany, England, and the US (total N = 1,192) highlight that meat reduction can result from a motivation to reduce the pervasive feelings of conflict. We discuss the implications of our model of ambivalence-motivated meat reduction for research on evaluative conflict and the psychology of (not) eating meat.

In the present research we shed light onto processes that may contribute to the decline in trust in experts and other authorities. In a study focusing on the risks of nanotechnology in food, we orthogonally manipulated personal control (high vs low), the expertise of a source communicating about the risks (high vs low) and the extent to which the source communicated with certainty or uncertainty. The main dependent measures were perceptions of ability and trust as well as risk attitudes. The results show perceptions of ability and overall trust were higher for an expert than for a non-expert source, but only when personal control was threatened and the source communicated certainty. When this was not the case, there was no difference in perceived ability or overall trust between the expert and non-expert source. The pattern of results for risk attitudes was similar. Implications for risk communication by experts are discussed.