The healthy, yet unhealthy choice: stereotypes about vegetarians and vegans in a meat-eating culture

Abstract

Stereotypes about vegetarians and vegans influence behavior toward these groups, as well as decisions about consumption of animal products in general, affecting the health and wellbeing of humans and other animals, as well as the environment. We extend the existing research with a study of stereotypes in a non-WEIRD meat-eating culture based on content analysis of open-ended responses (Study 1) and ratings on the competence and warmth dimensions (Study 2). We also sought to predict the positivity of stereotypes by the general attitude to animals, perception of vegetarianism as a threat to local traditions, and the anticipated moral reproach of vegetarians toward meat-eaters. We found that stereotypes about vegetarians are ambivalent, while stereotypes about vegans are more clearly negative, both to a greater extent among meat-eaters compared with vegetarians/vegans and among men compared with women. The open-ended responses were most frequently related to health, both good and poor health, and secondly to moral values, empathy, and commitment as well as unfavorable social traits. References to masculinity/femininity were not prominent in the spontaneous responses and neither was the general domain of competence, although both groups are ascribed relatively high competence when explicitly asked. While meat-eaters mostly relate vegetarianism and veganism to health, those who themselves are vegetarian or vegan most readily relate these choices to empathy and moral values, as well as free-mindedness. Perceptions of vegetarianism as a threat, as well as one’s general level of speciesism predicted stereotype positivity. We discuss how future cross-cultural research can benefit from the categories of traits we derived from the open-ended analysis and the implications of the findings for shaping public communications.

Effects of experimentally induced self-affirmation on the openness to meat reduction and alternative protein sources

“…Previous studies found that meat eaters can experience moral reproach, that is, the expectation that vegetarians and vegans will judge them for their meat consumption (Minson and Monin, 2012;Branković and Budžak, 2021). This concept of moral reproach thus encapsulates the perceived threat to the moral self, and we hypothesize that providing the opportunity for self-affirmation works through alleviating the expectation of moral reproach.…”

“…We also relied on health-related arguments for meat reduction, but other types of content and arguments should also be investigated. Given the predominance of the health-related association in the perception of vegetarians and vegans suggested by previous research (Branković and Budžak, 2021), we thought this would constitute relevant content for the persuasive message. However, ethical and moral issues could be the ones most directly related to self-integrity and the experienced self-that (Cohen and Sherman, 2014), so perhaps self-affirmations could play an even more prominent role in such cases.…”

“…In Figure 1, we summarize the theoretical model in which we propose that: 1. individual and group affirmations can increase openness to reduce meat consumption and consider alternative, plantbased sources of protein and lab-grown meat (Cohen and Sherman, 2014;Epton et al, 2015;Ferrer and Cohen, 2019), 2. individual affirmation would work through a reduced sense of moral reproach (Branković and Budžak, 2021), while group affirmations would reduce the perceived cultural threat (Branković, 2021), thus leading to more openness toward meat reduction communications, 3. frequency of meat consumption would negatively impact the capacity of affirmations to create more openness, that is, we expect more frequent meat eaters to be less susceptible to these inductions (Graça et al, 2015).…”

“…Perceived moral reproach against non-vegetarians was measured by two items rated on 7-point scales (α = 0.82), specifically: "Vegetarians mostly consider non-vegetarians immoral" and "If they saw me eat meat, most vegetarians would consider me immoral" (Branković and Budžak, 2021).…”

“…We chose the three items with the highest factor loadings for the current study, namely: "Vegetarianism poses a threat to our country's customs and traditions, " "Vegetarians and vegans should have more respect for the local traditional cuisine, which is simply based on meat, " and "People who insist on a vegetarian/vegan diet spoil important family gatherings and celebrations" (α = 0.73). We also changed the target group of the items to include both vegetarians and vegans, as previous research shows that vegans could be perceived as a more threatening group than vegetarians (Branković and Budžak, 2021).…”