Veganism as a Threat: When meat-eaters expect vegan food to taste bad
The divide between veganism and carnism is not simply an ideological difference but also a conflict of social identities. Vegans constitute a social group imbued with ideological significance as a campaign for animal rights, and the proliferation of vegan food throughout society represents the expansion of this social group. By rejecting vegan food and denying its palatability, meat-eaters directly oppose the suitability of vegan food and thus can indirectly reject the status of vegans as a social group.
DANIEL L. ROSENFELD: Underlying the consumption of meat, dairy, and eggs is a dominant ideology that philosophers and psychologists have termed carnism: a system of moral beliefs that condones the consumption of certain animals and their byproducts as food. Carnism is a latent ideology in most cultures, where consuming animal products is a default behavior. It explains why dogs are human companions whereas cows are human food, even though both species have the capacity to suffer. Humans have eaten animals as meat throughout much of our species’ evolution, and carnism provides an ideological system that legitimizes and normalizes the consumption of certain nonhuman animal species—and, in doing so, validates notions of human dominance and encourages system-justifying moral disengagements. People who strongly value carnism are likely to perceive this ideology as being under threat when animal products are challenged as a dietary default, which can strengthen ideological defenses that secure the status quo endorsing meat consumption.
The divide between veganism and carnism is not simply an ideological difference but also a conflict of social identities. In deciding to avoid animal products, vegans represent a distinct social group that categorically opposes the omnivorous majority. The term “vegan” itself was created for social identity purposes as a group of vegans in the 1940s sought to describe themselves concisely and uniquely (The Vegan Society). Veganism as a behavior lacks psychological significance without inherently considering the people who practice this behavior. Vegans constitute a social group imbued with ideological significance as a campaign for animal rights, and the proliferation of vegan food throughout society represents the expansion of this social group. By rejecting vegan food, meat-eaters directly oppose the suitability of vegan food and thus can indirectly reject the status of vegans as a social group—whether or not meat-eaters perceive vegans as a salient out-group in the moment…
Our findings suggest that carnism — the ideology that humans have a right to eat animals and their byproducts as food — explains a great deal about why meat-eaters expect vegan food to taste worse than animal-based food. Supporting predictions of intergroup threat theory, the relationship between carnism and expected tastiness of vegan food was mediated by perceived symbolic threat of veganism. Moreover, having participants reflect on the idea that veganism might be symbolically threatening caused them to report more unfavorable expectations about the tastiness of vegan food, relative to participants who completed no task prior to reporting their taste expectations. Veganism’s opposition to dominant group values can seem symbolically threatening, and these perceptions of threat might undermine consumer interest in vegan products, potentially widening dietary intergroup divides. These processes, in turn, may restrict the potential of vegan products to improve nonvegans’ health and to make all individuals’ future more sustainable.
The current findings add to an emerging body of research at the intersections of group processes, intergroup relations, and moral psychology, documenting how meat-eaters respond to symbolic threats by defending human dominance beliefs and morally justifying meat consumption. These phenomena may become increasingly relevant should vegan alternatives rival their animal-derived counterparts in mainstream food systems. Denying the palatability of vegan food may be a means by which dominant group members (meat-eaters) defuse threat to their group values that legitimize the consumption of animals and their byproducts as food.
Given that expectations about taste largely drive people’s food choices and explain people’s resistance to giving up meat, understanding group processes tied to taste expectations can ultimately guide efforts to change consumer behavior. By making vegan food products seem less symbolically threatening, marketers may be able to make these products more appealing to meat-eating consumers. Research on intergroup relations suggests that fostering perceptions of optimal distinctiveness between vegans and meat-eaters—emphasizing fundamental similarities between members of these groups while maintaining that each group has a unique identity — can help to reduce perceptions of symbolic threat. In this vein, instead of framing vegan products as replacements for animal-based products, it may be more effective to market vegan products as additions to consumers’ typical eating patterns; whereas replacement framing may heighten symbolic threat, addition framing may dampen it by emphasizing coexistence. SOURCE…
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