Meat and interpersonal motives: the case of self-enhancement.

Meat eaters have a more hierarchical, less egalitarian view at the world than vegetarians. This can be manifested in social dominance orientation, at the intergroup level, but also at the interspecies level, yielding more empathy with nonhuman animals, and at the interpersonal level. We examined if interpersonal motives in human-human relationships and empathy with people are associated with frequency of meat eating, using a cross-sectional survey (N = 580). For the motives power and affiliation, no significant relationships emerged, but the self-enhancement motive was positively related to the number of days that participants ate meat. This predicted additional variance over and above variables at the intergroup and interspecies level, such as social dominance orientation and human-animal continuity. Empathy with people was negatively related to meat consumption, but this was explained by its correlation with empathy with animals. Discussion focuses on the importance of the self-enhancement motive in attachment to meat, the symbol of human superiority, as well as resistance to meat refusers.

A communicational approach to enhance open-mindedness towards meat-refusers.

Meat-refusers (vegetarians and vegans) are typically derogated by meat eaters because they threaten meat eaters' moral self-image. In two preregistered experiments (N = 323 and N = 243), we examined the effects of communication style on this 'do-gooder' derogation. For this purpose, we developed a paradigm to create moral threat in participants in an online study. Afterwards, participants read an essay of a meat-refuser that was either static, confident, and result-oriented; or dynamic, uncertain, and process-oriented. Dynamically communicating meat-refusers were found to elicit less moral threat and be evaluated as less arrogant than static targets. Regardless of communication, meat refusers with non-moral motives were also evaluated as less threatening and arrogant than ethical vegetarians and vegans. We propose that dynamic communication can improve relations between meat eaters and meat-refusers and, thereby, may eventually inspire meat eaters to decrease their meat consumption in the future.