Moralistic stereotyping of vegans: The role of dietary motivation and advocacy status.

Ambivalent attitudes exist toward vegans: While people may admire vegans' moral aims and commitment, they may also derogate vegans for seeming arrogant and overcommitted. These latter negative perceptions may undermine the effectiveness of efforts to reduce meat consumption for health, animal-welfare, and sustainability benefits. In the present research, we investigated the role of a vegan's motivation (animal ethics vs. health) in moralized attitudes toward vegans among omnivorous participants through two preregistered studies. In Study 1 (N = 390), we found that a vegan advocate motivated by animal ethics (vs. health) was seen as more moral but not as more arrogantly overcommitted. In Study 2 (N = 1177), we found that animal ethics (vs. health) vegans were seen as both more arrogantly committed and more morally committed, but that relative moral commitment perceptions were attenuated when vegans were described as actively advocating. Both advocating (vs. non-advocating) vegans and animal ethics (vs. health) vegans were generally seen as less socially attractive by omnivores due to stronger attributions of arrogant overcommitment, and a lower social attractiveness was associated with a lower willingness to eat less animal products. Our findings inform ongoing debates within the vegan movement about the effectiveness of signaling moral commitment in promoting plant-based diets.

Moral rebels and dietary deviants: How moral minority stereotypes predict the social attractiveness of veg*ns.

In this preregistered study we examined why people with an omnivorous diet (i.e., omnivores) would view vegetarians and vegans (i.e., veg*ns) as less socially attractive based on their status as stigmatized moral minorities. Drawing on a recently demonstrated distinction between perceived morality and sociability in research on universal dimensions of stereotype content, we expected that veg*ns would be perceived as more moral but less sociable compared to omnivores. A lower perceived sociability would predict a lower social attractiveness of veg*ns, supported by two additional stereotypes theorized to be specifically associated with moral minorities: moralistic and eccentric impressions. In addition, we explored impressions toward people who consciously reduce their meat intake (i.e., flexitarians) and we complemented our quantitative analysis with an analysis of stereotype content omnivores freely associated with the dietary groups. Accordingly, using a single factor between-subjects experimental design, we randomly allocated a diverse sample of omnivores from the UK to answer questions about either omnivores (n = 100), flexitarians (n = 101), vegetarians (n = 105) or vegans (n = 106). Results largely confirmed our hypotheses: Although veg*ns were perceived as more moral, they were also stereotyped more negatively (especially vegans). More specifically, they were seen as more eccentric and, in particular, more moralistic, predicting a lower social attractiveness, though indirect effects via sociability were relatively small. Notably, flexitarians shared positive attributes of both non-flexitarian groups. Free association data were largely consistent with our results and provide additional direction for further inquiry. Novel theoretical contributions are highlighted and limitations, future research directions, and implications of our study for theory and practice are discussed.

Okay to promote eating less meat, but don't be a cheat - The role of dietary identity, perceived inconsistency and inclusive language of an advocate in legitimizing meat reduction.

The legitimacy of meat-rich diets in Western societies is slowly in decline as the benefits of meat reduction for personal health, ecological welfare, and animal welfare are become increasingly clear. This is mirrored by a surge of campaigns, which rely heavily on social media platforms to legitimize meat reduction among their target audience: meat-eaters. Social Identity Theory suggests that the effectiveness of meat reduction advocacy will depend on the dietary identity of advocates and their rhetorical style. To examine this, we used a 2 × 2 between-participants factorial design in which we exposed meat-eaters (N = 186) to a meat reduction campaign image shared by an advocate on Facebook, where the advocate was portrayed as either a meat-eater (ingroup) or a vegetarian (outgroup), who used either inclusive language ("we can eat less meat") or personal language ("you can eat less meat") to promote meat reduction. Results reveal that the meat-eating (versus vegetarian) advocate was more likely perceived as inconsistent when promoting meat reduction. Higher perceptions of inconsistency were significantly associated with a lower perceived legitimacy of the message for both advocate types, especially when the advocate was a vegetarian. We also found that meat-eaters were more tolerant of a perceived inconsistency when advocates used inclusive rather than personal language. Perceptions of favouritism towards the advocate could explain the conditional effects of perceived inconsistency on message legitimacy. Lastly, we could observe that meat-eaters who perceived the message as more legitimate and identified less as meat-eaters were more willing to eat less meat. Practical implications of our findings are considered.

Ideological resistance to veg*n advocacy: An identity-based motivational account.

Animal-based diets in Western countries are increasingly regarded as unsustainable because of their impact on human health, environmental and animal welfare. Promoting shifts toward more plant-based diets seems an effective way to avoid these harms in practice. Nevertheless, claims against the consumption of animal products contradict the ideology of the omnivorous majority known as carnism. Carnism supports animal-product consumption as a cherished social habit that is harmless and unavoidable and invalidates minorities with plant-based diets: vegetarians and vegans (veg*ns). In this theoretical review, we integrate socio-psychological and empirical literature to provide an identity-based motivational account of ideological resistance to veg*n advocacy. Advocates who argue against the consumption of animal products often make claims that it is harmful, and avoidable by making dietary changes toward veg*n diets. In response, omnivores are likely to experience a simultaneous threat to their moral identity and their identity as consumer of animal products, which may arouse motivations to rationalize animal-product consumption and to obscure harms. If omnivores engage in such motivated reasoning and motivated ignorance, this may also inform negative stereotyping and stigmatization of veg*n advocates. These "pro-carnist" and "counter-veg*n" defenses can be linked with various personal and social motivations to eat animal products (e.g., meat attachment, gender, speciesism) and reinforce commitment to and ambivalence about eating animal products. This does not mean, however, that veg*n advocates cannot exert any influence. An apparent resistance may mask indirect and private acceptance of advocates' claims, priming commitment to change behavior toward veg*n diets often at a later point in time. Based on our theoretical account, we provide directions for future research.

Ensuring a Post-COVID Economic Agenda Tackles Global Biodiversity Loss.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused dramatic and unprecedented impacts on both global health and economies. Many governments are now proposing recovery packages to get back to normal, but the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Global Assessment indicated that business as usual has created widespread ecosystem degradation. Therefore, a post-COVID world needs to tackle the economic drivers that create ecological disruptions. In this perspective, we discuss a number of tools across a range of actors for both short-term stimulus measures and longer-term revamping of global, national, and local economies that take biodiversity into account. These include measures to shift away from activities that damage biodiversity and toward those supporting ecosystem resilience, including through incentives, regulations, fiscal policy, and employment programs. By treating the crisis as an opportunity to reset the global economy, we have a chance to reverse decades of biodiversity and ecosystem losses.