The psychology of eating animals and veg*nism

Vegetarian and vegan (Veg*n) diets are increasingly popular in Western societies and an increasingly common topic of psychological research. Animal-free diets hold considerable potential for helping curb the climate crisis and improving interspecies justice. This special issue presents recent contributions from research on the psychology of meat eating and veg*nism. To situate these articles in a broader context, we first establish the importance of studying veg*nism. We then review papers in this special issue, organized into themes of motivations and characteristics of veg*ns, attitudes towards veg*ns, attitudes toward meat and alternative proteins, intentions to eat meat or plant-based foods, consumption of meat or plant-based foods, and meat reduction interventions. We conclude with future directions for this blossoming field of study.

When meat-eaters expect vegan food to taste bad: Veganism as a symbolic threat

People who eat meat generally expect vegan food to taste bad. We theorize that this expectation stems in part from the perception that veganism is symbolically threatening; devaluing vegan food may enable meat-eaters to defend in-group values and defuse symbolic threat. We conducted four studies (total N = 1,563) on meat-eaters residing in the US. In Studies 1a and 1b, participants who most strongly endorsed carnism—the ideology that humans have a right to eat animals and their byproducts as food—were most likely to expect vegan food to taste bad. In Study 2, perceptions of veganism as symbolically threatening explained the relationship between carnism and taste expectations. In Study 3, experimentally increasing the salience of symbolic threat worsened taste expectations. Attachment to dominant group values and perceptions of intergroup threat may be barriers to the acceptance of veganism.

Motivated Moral Outrage Among Meat-Eaters

Many meat-eaters experience cognitive dissonance when aware that their eating behaviors contradict their moral values, such as desires to protect the environment or animals from harm. One way in which people morally disengage from their behaviors—and thus avoid dissonance—is to displace responsibility onto others. Aligning with this notion, results of three studies (total N = 1,501) suggest that expressing moral outrage at third-party transgressors reduces dissonance and preserves moral identity among meat-eaters. When participants understood their in-group as responsible for factory farming’s negative impact or read about factory farming’s harms to animals, expressing moral outrage at third-party transgressors reduced guilt and elevated self-rated moral character. Moreover, reflecting on the morally troublesome nature of meat-eating led participants to express more moral outrage at a third-party organization responsible for animal abuse, an effect eliminated by self-affirmation. These findings substantiate moral outrage as a new mechanism to justify meat consumption.

Psychological Science in the Wake of COVID-19: Social, Methodological, and Metascientific Considerations

The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic's wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon-an event that hinges on human-to-human contact-we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology. We highlight specific psychological phenomena that have likely shifted as a result of the pandemic and discuss theoretical, methodological, and practical considerations of conducting research on these phenomena. After this discussion, we evaluate metascientific issues that have been amplified by the pandemic. We aim to demonstrate how theoretically grounded views on the COVID-19 pandemic can help make psychological science stronger-not weaker-in its wake.

Mostly Vegetarian, But Flexible About It: Investigating How Meat-Reducers Express Social Identity Around Their Diets

Beyond indicating that one does not eat meat, the decision to identify as vegetarian signals social identity. Yet many people limit their meat intake without giving up meat entirely: These people are called flexitarians (a term combining the words, “flexible” and “vegetarian”). Some flexitarians, despite eating meat, consider themselves to be vegetarian. Through a preregistered study ( N = 837), we investigated how flexitarians express social identity around their diets—namely, how they self-identify on a continuous scale ranging from meat-eater (i.e., omnivorous) to vegetarian. Over and above actual eating behavior, two psychosocial variables emerged as significant predictors of flexitarians’ levels of vegetarian identification: the centrality of meat-reduced dieting to their identity and their beliefs about carnism (the ideology of eating animals). These results suggest that greater consideration of meat-reduced eating behaviors offers promise for elucidating the intersections of social identity and moral judgment.

Social Norms and Identity Relevance: A Motivational Approach to Normative Behavior

Two studies demonstrated that greater identification with a group was associated with more positive emotions for members who conformed with versus violated the group’s norms. These effects were found with injunctive norms, which specify what members should do or what they ideally would do, but emerged less consistently with descriptive norms, which specify what members typically do. Descriptive norms affected emotional responses when they acquired identity-relevance by differentiating an important ingroup from a rival outgroup. For these descriptive norms, much like injunctive norms, greater identification yielded more positive emotions following conformity than violation. The authors suggest that positive emotions and self-evaluations underlie conformity with the norms of self-defining groups.

Horizontal hostility among non-meat eaters

The present study examined intergroup judgments made between four groups of non-meat eaters: health vegetarians; ethical vegetarians; health vegans, and ethical vegans. Consistent with hypotheses based on horizontal hostility and the need to maintain ingroup distinctiveness, ethical vegetarians gave unfavorable evaluations to health vegetarians relative to vegans, especially when the mainstream omnivore group was made salient. Contrary to expectations, vegans gave relatively more favorable evaluations to ethical vegetarians than health vegetarians when mainstream salience was low. This was especially true for vegans who were motivated primarily by ethical concerns. When mainstream salience was high, vegans did not distinguish between the vegetarian subgroups. Results suggest that one's motives for abstaining from meat often play a larger role in this type of intergroup perceptions than one's dietary practices.

Evaluation of Ingroup Disloyalty Within a MultiGroup Context

The present research sought to determine if group vulnerability to ingroup norm violations moderated evaluations of these disloyal acts. Specifically, it tested the notion that smaller groups, groups organized around a moral cause, and groups demanding relatively high sacrifice from members would most harshly evaluate instances of ingroup disloyalty because such actions may be more likely to dissolve the group, undermine its message, or tempt other members to deviate. A first experiment found that the most distinct and vulnerable group – vegans – devalued disloyal ingroup behavior more than others, particularly when the mainstream was salient. A second experiment also found that vegans rated ingroup disloyalty more negatively than vegetarians when the disloyal act was unconcealed, that is, committed in front of outgroup members who knew the violator’s group membership. In addition, this effect was found to be primarily mediated by concerns that disloyalty would undermine intergroup distinctiveness and the ingroup’s message.

A naturalistic study of stereotype threat in young female chess players

The present research sought to determine whether young female chess players would demonstrate stereotype threat susceptibility in a naturalistic environment. Data from 12 scholastic chess tournaments indicated that females performed worse than expected when playing against a male opponent, achieving 83% of the expected success based on their own and their opponent’s prerating. These effects were strongest for the youngest players in lower elementary school but also present for those in upper elementary. Stereotype threat susceptibility was most pronounced in contexts that could be considered challenging: when playing a strong or moderate opponent and when playing someone in a higher or the same grade. As evidence of disengagement, those most vulnerable to stereotype threat were less likely to continue playing in future chess tournaments. These results were not found in a matched comparison male group suggesting the outcomes were unique to stereotype threat and not universal to young chess players.

Social identity and individual productivity within groups

The purpose of the present research was to show how social identity theory can be applied to enhance individual productivity within groups. Three experiments manipulated in-group identifiability and importance of the group for one's social identity, and compared individual's productivity when working alone to when working in a group setting. The group setting in the first study involved either a collective of unrelated individuals, a group of participants expecting future interaction, or a group working for a group reward. The second study compared productivity in groups with four differing interdependent reward structures. The final study examine the impact of group members wearing a common uniform (vs. no uniform) and the presence (or absence) of an out-group. Results supported the general prediction that group productivity would be enhanced by factors that increase group categorization and the importance of the group to members' social identities (future interaction, interdependent reward structure and uniform/outgroup present). However, productivity in groups was not influenced by perceptions of the task or identifiability of performance. These findings extent social identity theory by suggesting that group members will increase their in-group position through individual work efforts.

Psychosocial adjustment of children with spina bifida

It was the aim of the present prospective study to investigate the influence of age, sex, intellectual function, and school type as well as of hydrocephalus, the level of lesion, and of the degree of handicap on the psychosocial adjustment of children with spina bifida. Seventy-five patients with spina bifida, aged 6 to 16 years were assessed concerning their psychosocial adjustment and their intellectual function by use of standardized instruments. The findings were compared with those of nondisabled controls, matched for age and sex. Children with spina bifida showed a tendency to be at an increased risk for psychosocial maladjustment. Influencing factors were age, sex, and the degree of handicap. Twelve- to 16-year-old boys and girls displayed significant adjustment problems in specific areas in comparison with their controls. There was a tendency for children with spina bifida to be attending inappropriate school types according to their intellectual abilities. Perhaps the most striking finding of our study was that children with spina bifida who attended a school for disabled children, even though it might be an IQ-appropriate setting, had a higher rate of psychosocial maladjustment than the disabled children in mainstream schools.

External intergroup threat as an antecedent to perceptions of in-group and out-group homogeneity

The present research examined the relationship between external intergroup threat and perceptions of group variability. The first study found that when Texas A&M University students worked on a task in which students from a rival university were allegedly biased against them, they perceived more intragroup similarities versus differences than in an out-group benevolent condition and a control condition, and they also perceived the self as more similar to the in-group and more different from the out-group. These results were replicated in a second study, which used the same methodology except that the benevolent condition was excluded. The findings are discussed in terms of different reactions that individuals have to internal and external intergroup threat.

Conformity to sex-typed norms, affect, and the self-concept

The self-concept plays an important role in conformity to sex-typed social norms. Normative beliefs that men are powerful, dominant, and self-assertive and that women are caring, intimate with others, and emotionally expressive represent possible standards for whom people ought to be and whom they ideally would like to be. In the present research, to the extent that sex role norms were personally relevant for participants, norm-congruent experiences (i.e., those involving dominance for men and communion for women) yielded positive feelings and brought their actual self-concepts closer to the standards represented by ought and ideal selves.